Voices in the Night
by ludivine loves rain
Summary: Vilkas is a man of few words, and as a bard, Harjid has plenty.
1. Chapter 1

When first he saw her, Vilkas expected a deeper, more sultry tone to waft from her mouth. The voice of a bard was meant to carry its tales through a room of drunken Nords; as he approached the banquet table, however, he saw rather than heard her speak, and Kodlak and Farkas each drew back and laughed. Finally, dropping the book in front of the Harbinger, Vilkas heard her words, little and light as a bell—"From what I see, the Companions seem to embody the rowdy spirit of the truest Nords, don't you think?"

"No truer words were ever spoken," Farkas agreed with a sip of his ale.

"Although I must say, I hardly expected any of you to read."

Kodlak slapped a paw to Vilkas' arm. "Aye," he said, "young Vilkas is our resident historian. He'll be helping you with your notes, miss."

"Harjid, please." She held her hand aloft, which Vilkas supposed he should grab. She saved him from wondering if he should put his lips to it by drawing it quickly away, as if she was afraid he'd smear it with the dirt from his morning training session in the yard. He was afraid of that, too.

Vilkas nodded once at her, then knew by the look Farkas gave him that it wasn't enough. "Hello," he grunted.

She looked up at him and then over to his brother. "He might be more handsome than you are."

Farkas grinned like a fool, but Vilkas, knowing that she awaited a reaction, was inclined to silence and crossed his arms.

"I'm afraid the warriors of Jorrvaskr have never thought much of sarcasm, miss," said Kodlak to Farkas' nod.

"Me an' my brother like words to be straight." She opened her mouth with a glint in her eye, but Farkas interrupted her thought: "And you're sitting in his spot."

"Oh! I'd no idea the Companions enforced arranged seating. How orderly."

Vilkas ran his tongue over his molars, and Kodlak leaned his elbow on the arm of his chair.

"Harjid is a bard from the College in Cyrodiil," he said to Vilkas pointedly. "She's studying Nordic lore to compose a book of songs."

"I thought bards just sang songs."

"Aye, Farkas," Vilkas said, breaking his silence again, "but writing a book of songs is a more economic way to spread the tales."

"You're absolutely right, Vilkas." She sipped her wine. "I confess, my love lies with Morrowind's history, but with the war, and now dragons and the death of the High King, the tales of Skyrim's heroes are in high demand. So it seems this is where the drakes are, pardon the pun."

"You came to a war-torn province to weigh down your pockets, little miss?" Vilkas eyed her green smock and soft shoulders. "You should weigh down your arms with sword and shield instead."

"Oh, I'm sure I can handle myself." She paused before taking another sip from her goblet. "If not, I can always hire you, yes?"

Farkas grunted in the affirmative, but Vilkas scoffed. "You just said you're here to make money, which means you don't have enough. So what will you do? Can you even lift a lute high enough to strike a man?—a Nordic man?"

She looked him in the eyes then, her soft little face stern as it could be. "I have strength enough to slip a blade through a vein." She didn't blink, but a smile warmed her countenance again as she said, "Especially when it throbs so eagerly out of a man's head."

Farkas laughed heartily, Kodlak only politely, and Vilkas not at all.

#

Kodlak found an appropriate time to excuse himself and even managed to distract Farkas from the newcomer, though Vilkas thought that hardly necessary; she wasn't half as pretty as the lasses in Whiterun who threw themselves at his younger brother, but Farkas always did have a hard time pulling himself away from the ones who stroked his ego.

Vilkas watched her leaf through _The First Five Hundred_ with little more than contempt; her eyes darted over it too fleetingly, her little noises too practiced for her to truly be considering the material.

"This is beautiful binding," she said finally, and that was proof enough. But he wanted to see how long she kept it up, so he offered more than he had the first half of the morning.

"It isn't really," he said, arms folded on the table. "The original disintegrated more every time it was opened, so I ripped out the rest and rebound it in a new, sturdier cover."

Harjid's eyes leveled on him as if she awaited an explanation. But he'd already given her one, so when she wouldn't stop, he grew testy and grumbled, "What?"

She sighed. "You threw it out? Do you even know how old it was? Even books from the Third Era are worth hundreds of Septims. That you just ripped apart an artifact that could have provided insigh—"

"This was a dirty old cover, missy. What's important is what's inside, and if I hadn't saved it, you'd have nothing to study."

"Well." She let the gilded front fall onto her hand and considered it a moment. "As it stands, that's true. I can't read Ancient Nordic."

Vilkas pressed a finger into the tabletop. "Everything worth reading about Skyrim is in Ancient Nordic, little miss. What's your plan, now?"

She braided her fingers together and lifted her shoulders in a dainty shrug. "If you know it so well—"

"No. Absolutely not. I have no time to rewrite a book. If you want to study Nordic history, you should just learn Ancient Nordic."

"But I'm already studying Dwemeri."

Vilkas scoffed. "A deader language than that of the dragons."

"As is Ancient Nordic."

"It's nothing of the sort. Ancient Nordic is a fine, sturdy tongue that's still spoken at the hearth of every true Nord since before Ysgramor."

"And when was that?—the mythic age, no doubt."

"Your tone is as slippery as you are, little miss. Speak the words in your heart instead of dancing around them."

"I don't know if you can handle my kind of honesty."

He scowled.

Finally, she shrugged and said, "So you're telling me that you believe in a hero who lived thousands of years ago committed acts of such valor that his reputation and words have been passed down through the generations, accurately, to land upon our laps here and inspire your little ones to drink ale instead of milk and fight with ax and hammer instead of magicka and cleverness? A hero whose deeds haven't been equaled since? It's preposterous."

Vilkas swallowed, then pressed a finger into the table. "You're negating the heroes we have in our own time. Who is to say that our present company won't have the same tales ascribed to Ysgramor in our era written in our histories? Consider even the Nerevarine, who is still living in the Ascadian Isles, teaching young Dark Elves about the shattered Tribunal and the power to be gained from small, daily actions. Or even someone from your own province, Martin Septim."

"The Nerevarine could be a liar. All these historians could be liars."

Vilkas allowed that some deeds were certainly exaggerated with each new singer of songs, but even legends are born of some truth, and without a doubt, many heroic deeds of Ysgramor's Companions have been forgotten through the ages. "So if some anonymous adventurer's victories are falsely credited to Ysgramor, or Martin Septim, or the lying Dark Elf, we mustn't lower the mighty to coddle the lesser," he insisted. "Rather, we ought to thank our ancestors and their forgotten contributions to our honorable history, muddled or not."

She watched him for a moment, stroking her goblet with her thumbs. "I admire your faith," she said at last, cocking her head and setting the wine down. "It's more sincere to worship ancestors than some blind allegiance to gods made of marble."

"You have no faith, like many Imperials. Can't you even believe in Talos? He's as real as anyone in your books."

"I worship Tiber Septim in a roundabout way, yes." She dropped a coin on the table.

He scowled from the coin to the girl. "We're done today."

"Are we, now? And who are you to say?"

"A Nord!" he snapped. "Anyone who calls himself a Companion would refuse to translate an account of our history for the likes of some tavern wench who wants to fill her coffers."

Harjid shot up, hardly taller than Vilkas while he sat, but she lowered herself to his face anyway, poking him in the chest. "You have a lot of nerve for someone who needs the coin of other men to tell him where to swing his sword."

He leaned back in his chair and regarded her with the beginnings of a grin. "You need to sit down."

"Who are you to tell anyone what they ought to do?" she asked, crossing her arms over a willowy chest.

Vilkas stood slow as a predator, his shoulders blocking the light of the sconce above her, his eyes aglow within darkened sockets. "I told you what you _need_ to do, and I have the right amount of nerve for someone who knows how to use this sword. Now, should we continue, or are you refusing to sit?"

Harjid scoffed. "Are you _really_ trying to intimidate someone my size? I hope you don't embody the Companions' idea of honor."

"And what if I do?" Vilkas leered. "Will you find some other honorable faction to disgrace with your sarcasm?"

"You're the one who called me a tavern wench!"

"Aye, because you came into my hall disrespecting our people. So how will you defend yourself if I decide you're worth the fight?"

She stared up at him as steadily as she had when she stood over him. "With your own honor, Companion. There _is_ none in hitting someone smaller than yourself, so you won't even draw your sword."

"If that were true, I'd have only giants and my brother to hit. Someone picks a fight with me, I treat them the way I would any opponent who's _worth_ the effort. It's the highest compliment I give."

"I'll remember to feel honored when you split open my throat."

"I don't need my sword for that." He'd meant his hands, but her eyes darted down from his, then back up, and she drew away with a sneer.

"You're an animal."

"Then leave my pen, woman. And close your mouth while you're at it. Animals would consider the opening an invitation."

She dropped a little purse of coins on the table, still meeting his gaze with foolish defiance, and he smelled—something, he was sure, as she turned to leave. Harjid shot him a look when she opened the door, and though it was all fury on the surface, it was all the confirmation he'd needed.

She was aroused.

#

"Vilkas, my boy."

"Kodlak," he replied, and pointed at the chair accompanying the Harbinger's with his eyebrows raised.

"Please," Kodlak said gruffly, offering a bottle of mead. "How went your job this morning?"

Vilkas accepted the drink with a snort. "You couldn't hear her?—couldn't _smell_ her?"

Kodlak opened his palms over his papers. "I get as lost as you do, boy."

"That you do." Vilkas drank, a little appreciative Kodlak hadn't asked about Harjid's smell. "As it was, we barely began before she stormed out."

"That so?" Kodlak brushed the tabletop with half a smile. "I thought—maybe I hoped—you two might get on. She and Farkas certainly did."

"Aye, but Farkas could take a Hagraven to bed before she ever thought to incinerate him. He's a friendly pup."

Kodlak chuckled. "So he is. And Harjid is not so easy to get along with?"

Vilkas recalled her arousal and shifted his thighs together, raising his mead with a bark of bitter laughter. "To understatements."

"Understatements," Kodlak toasted. "What did you discuss, then?"

Vilkas opened his mouth, then closed it and huffed. "She's infuriating."

"Is she, now? Don't allow it to challenge your resolve. If she's as vile as you say, she isn't worth the temptation to give in to the beast blood. A shame. I thought you'd enjoy her."

Vilkas almost laughed again.

#

The morning dawned chilly but bright, and Vilkas had some whelp called Jelani take a stack of notes to the Bannered Mare, where _she_ was staying. And with that, she was finally off his mind.

It was about time, too, as she'd been there all through the night, dancing on each of his tightly wound nerves while he summarized _The First Five Hundred_ and added his own interpretation to his transliteration. He kept his words professional on the pages despite the urge to give in to disdain, but he would not have her taint his study of Ysgramor. No, she would certainly derive some smirking pleasure from that. _Probably even drive her to ecstasy_ , he thought with a frown.

Farkas asked him if he was hung over, and he shook his head. "Skjor's out back," he offered, and there Vilkas went, sipping at his ale.

He preferred Skjor above all other Companions to train with; he was Vilkas' mentor in battle as Kodlak was in more cerebral persuits, but what Skjor offered beyond his unquestionable skill was silence. When Vilkas sparred, nothing annoyed him more than his brother's insisting he'd made a "Nice hit," or Ria's "Well played, sir!" That kind of frivolous encouragement he cast off as easily as it was given, and he guessed Skjor felt the same. Even Harjid's insults would be preferable—at least those were spoken in honesty.

Vilkas put her out of his mind again as he handed Skjor a tourney sword in question. He nodded and stood and lunged at him before he was ready, and Vilkas appreciated it more than he could say.

"You're thinking too much," Skjor growled, hardly fazed as they met blades again.

Vilkas panted, and Skjor tapped his temple above his blind eye.

"That bloody vein is hammering out of your head, boy."

Vilkas nodded, and they went until Skjor lost interest in his sluggish parries and tossed the blunt blade at his feet.

"Don't fight me if you can't take it, pup," he told Vilkas calmly.

Vilkas spat in frustration and followed him up to the table where Aela had been watching.

"Haven't seen you this winded in a while, Brother," she said after Skjor pecked her forehead. "This silly vow getting to you?"

Vilkas clenched his hands into fists. "Not today, Aela."

She laughed and shared a look with Skjor. "What's got you so tense, then? Surely not the girl from yesterday."

"Looks like that might be so," Skjor laughed upon Vilkas' reaction.

"Hardly," Vilkas assured them. "I stayed awake half the night writing her notes and the other half wondering why I bothered."

"Because you love the legends as much as Farkas loves a brawl," Aela said with a shrug. "No matter how detestable the student. It's a testament to the respect you hold for your subject."

Vilkas rolled his tired eyes. "Can't you talk about something else? She was on my mind all the night, and that's enough for one lifetime."

Aela's eyes darted to the hand encircling his tankard, and she settled a questioning look on Skjor, who was drinking from his own.

"What?" said Vilkas, putting down his ale.

"Nothing," Aela replied. "Just that we can smell how much you thought of her last night on your sword hand."

Vilkas nearly got up and left, for he certainly had not thought of her when he'd done _that_ —who would need to?—but then Tilma shuffled down the steps from inside Jorrvaskr, leading the bard herself.

Aela knocked on the table. "We'll leave you to it," she said, hooking an arm through Skjor's and leading him out into the yard.

"Good morning."

He turned to Harjid, whose hair was plaited in a crown that caught the light of the sun like honey.

"Morning," he grunted, tapping his tankard as she took Aela's seat.

"Believe me," she began, folding her hands on the table, "the last thing I want to do is interrupt your day. I just have some questions about the papers you sent me earlier." She pulled them, curled into a roll by Jelani, out of her leather satchel on the ground beside her.

"What questions could you possibly have?" he sneered. "I gave you a summary with a transliteration of all Ysgramor's dialogue. It's all straightforward."

She did not even bother to dismiss his insults; she ignored them entirely. "It is," she said, and he could detect no teasing in her expression. "It's just the matter of the figure himself. I couldn't tell from your notes whether Ysgramor was a braggart or a man of few words, like yourself. I know nothing of his identity but his deeds and his declarations to do them."

 _A fair question_ , Vilkas thought. "That's a gamble to answer, missy. Ask any man about the heroes he admired in childhood and he'll tell you they had the same traits he admires most in himself."

Harjid smiled, and the apples of her cheeks flushed an absurd pink. "Very astute, Vilkas. I'd heard the reputation you've built with your studiousness, and I suppose I thought someone along the way just exaggerated the mental prowess of a local hero with half a brain. I'm thrilled to be proven so decidedly wrong."

He felt himself bristling, but she had somewhat complimented him, and he refused to turn to insults first. Though he did have to amend his thought before expressing it. "I don't think you like to be wrong."

She cocked her head as she eyed him, then wetted her lips before she spoke. "You and I work in legends, where every virtue is stretched into sainthood, so forgive me if I tend to believe in the least of other people. So when I'm shown that I'm wrong about someone, it's a fine surprise indeed. As was your delivery this morning."

Vilkas nodded. "Better a definite no than a weak yes."

At that, Harjid lifted his tankard of ale and drank it in toast.

#

 _ **Thanks for reading! I'm afraid Jelani will take the role in the Companions that is usually reserved for the Dragonborn, so we won't see Kodlak sizing up Harjid or Farkas taking her to Dustman's Cairn. This story is less about the game and more about the weaknesses of the characters, specifically Vilkas and my OC, Harjid.**_

 _ **I do not own the Elder Scrolls series.**_


	2. Chapter 2

Clouds that looked like clumps of dust swarmed the Throat of the World's peak, churning with lightning and spitting rain onto the plains below Whiterun. Vilkas was right again; he'd predicted the storm after she set down his ale and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, loosened in the rough Nordic wind.

"I doubt it," she'd said, and he sniffed at the air, looking none too pleased. "Will you be joining Farkas and me at the Mare tonight? Mikael and I are singing duets."

He scoffed and called Mikael a milk drinker.

"He has a fine voice," she insisted, trying to clasp some remainders of her patience. "Don't you like music?"

"I like music," he'd said, almost with a pout. "But I hate dancing."

She offered the only solution there was. "Then don't dance."

Vilkas rubbed his stubbly cheek, eyeing something in the pillar behind her. "You're certain Farkas is going?"

Harjid had nodded, and he resigned himself to something akin to the duties of a child's nurse.

"Uthgerd won't leave him alone if he goes, and I don't want to spend another Septim to bail him out for his drunken brawling."

As it was, Vilkas could do as he pleased. His presence would not hinder her voice, certainly, but she began to practice as soon as she closed her room door back at the Mare. Something delicious awaited in the promise of proving someone wrong, and Vilkas was certain she could not carry her voice over the rowdiness of Nords. He would never admit to being wrong, but his presence when she sang would be all the affirmation she needed.

He and his brother had come after her second song with Mikael, who believed himself more talented than she. Perhaps he was; she cared little one way or the other, but her bowl filled with coins more quickly, and four had come from the more approachable of the two Companions.

Mikael asked if he might entertain the room with a few solo performances, but she had met the eye of someone already, and so obliged. He sat within the storeroom and watched her suspiciously until she took the chair beside him.

"Delvin's doing well," she said nonchalantly, and Mallus Maccius leaned forward, his pale features brightened only as much as his smile could allow.

"You were the last person I thought! But I guess it makes sense, you have to have a cover, right?"

"You should announce it," she said, sipping her mead.

"Right. So it's pretty simple. I need my boss, Sabjorn, to go away."

Harjid pressed her lips together, but Mallus shook his head.

"No, I know Delvin is with the Guild now. By the Eight, I don't have the coin for the Brotherhood! But the Guild will do nicely." He explained the job, and it sounded a bit like the Guild was getting paid very well for something that Sabjorn's lackey should handle himself.

Harjid smiled as sweetly as she could manage. "Surely your employer thinks you capable of dealing with a few skeevers. And you handled them fine on the way in. I wonder what he'll say when you have a young lady come to flush them out."

"By all means," Mallus said, nodding at Vilkas just now sitting at the bar, "use one of your friends. I don't give a damn. I need this done tomorrow."

"Fine. Then what'll you give me for a few Dwemer dishes?"

Mallus leaned forward. "Really you should be going to a guy called Calcelmo. He's the court wizard over Markarth way. Eccentric old elf, collects all sorts of Dwarven junk. Hear talk he's opening a museum of it." Finally he winked. "He'll give you what it's worth."

She doubted whether someone who collected Dwemer artifacts would really be desperate enough to give her a good price on a few chipped plates, but she thanked him anyway and stood.

Vilkas was hunched over a drink and nodding every time Hulda raised her brows to offer another bottle. He had six empties when Harjid approached him, smiling through her trepidation.

"You must be nearing intoxication about now," she said carefully.

"Hardly," he drawled, sipping his newest. "Can anyone even hear you over his damn whistle?"

She laughed, leaning back against the bar with her elbows. "I haven't been singing! And it's called a _flute_ , Companion. Of course, it's easier for me to be heard in Cyrodiil—the audience isn't nearly so drunk, but I guess they just don't need to be. Not in that province."

His eyes flickered up to the wall behind the bar. "Then why not go back?"

"Because your brother has given me seven drakes already."

Vilkas tutted, then looked past her at the mercenary woman in the corner. "She give anyone trouble before I got here?"

Harjid couldn't stop her grimace. "I'm afraid she doesn't hate anyone as much as you. She and I have that in common."

His lips stretched back on one side, and she was annoyed that it was almost handsome. "She killed one of ours, you know."

"I didn't know," she said, sitting beside him and leaning in to hear.

"Aye, a whelp. The one who joined before Jelani—he delivered those papers to you this morning." Vilkas downed number seven. "That boy couldn't have been sixteen."

Her eyes narrowed, and she stopped herself from looking over her shoulder at Uthgerd. "Who would send a child up against a woman like that?"

Vilkas kneaded his forehead.

"Why in Oblivion would you do something so stupid?" She hadn't meant to say that, but he certainly would've said the same thing.

His fist tightened on his ale until his scarred knuckles turned white. "Don't," he said, his chest heaving. "You wouldn't understand."

"Yes, I suppose you're right." She stood and shot Uthgerd a look as well. "You fighters are all the same. Glory is worth someone's death every time, isn't it? I'm sure Ysgramor would approve."

Vilkas' eyes flashed almost gold, and he looked like he wanted to hit her for a moment. He stood and flung his drink at the cupboard behind the bar, and the music stopped, and someone cursed behind them. He huffed and settled back onto his stool, and before long the music resumed. "Why don't you shove that thing up the talented end?" he called over his shoulder.

Mikael's playing faltered again, and Harjid rolled her eyes and stalked off to sit with Jon Battle-Born and Farkas.

"Is he alright?" Jon asked.

Farkas jumped in, brushing off his brother's outburst as a common occurrence as of quite recently.

Harjid nodded. "He told me about Uthgerd."

"No, that's not all of it," Farkas said. "It's a Companion thing. Just us in the Circle."

"Oh." Harjid hadn't realized there was another tier of exclusivity within their group.

"Yeah, it's me and my brother, then Aela and Skjor and Kodlak."

"I see," she said, though she really didn't. All the Companions looked fierce, and she was too green to judge which warrior bested another.

"What makes you more special, then?" said Jon.

"Can't tell," Farkas replied, and Harjid wondered whether he meant he didn't know or that it was confidential.

She couldn't keep herself from looking from Vilkas to Farkas and back again. Jon grew tired of the silence and busied himself with Hulda's Redguard server.

"How did you and your brother come to be Companions, Farkas?"

He smiled at her. "It was our father. Vilkas remembers him better, though. We've been here since we were pups."

"You grew up at Jorrvaskr."

"Yeah. Youngest to ever join _and_ to be in the Circle."

"Is it a fancy ceremony?"

"Yeah."

"Did all of Whiterun attend?"

Farkas laughed. "Of course not. It's about blood, Harjid."

 _For the sake of glory, every time._ "Blood, yes. I should have known."

"You know, you're real pretty."

Harjid started, and tore her eyes away from Farkas' brother. "Thank you."

"You're from Cyrodiil, huh?"

"I am. But my mother was a Nord."

"I can tell. You got light skin."

She nodded.

"You like it here?"

"Um—"

Vilkas had upended his stool when Mikael approached him, and everyone in the Bannered Mare fell silent.

"Are you some kind of animal?" Mikael spat, though his voice wavered.

Farkas darted over, stumbling on the bench across the fire and catching his brother mid-swing.

Harjid sprang over to Mikael and led him away from the seething Companion, whose number of empty bottles topped twelve already. "Don't do this," she said into his ear. "He could kill you with one hit."

Mikael pulled away from her once the door fell shut behind Vilkas and Farkas. She scoffed at his pride, certainly unearned, for his arms were little bigger than hers were.

Harjid bounced from step to step until she was on the landing before her room door, and as the patrons of the inn went about their revelry, she caught Mikael sliding out after the twins.

She couldn't contain her sigh, and considered—briefly—leaping off the balcony, but that was preposterous. At least for a bard. Harjid flew down the stairs and slipped out the back door, rounding the tavern as thunder sounded over the distant plains.

Farkas was arguing with his brother to little effect, and in the lights from the Bannered Mare, Mikael heaved up his lute to throw it, and before it hit Vilkas, Harjid pushed him into Farkas and yelped when it cracked against her shoulder.

Before Harjid felt the full force of her fall, Vilkas was upright again and rounding on Mikael, holding him up by the shirt. "No, stop! Vilkas! Don't!"

She was too late for the second hit, but before he'd landed a third, he turned to find her on the ground and released Mikael, Farkas already trying to pull her up.

"Go inside," she told Mikael, who wiped at the blood gushing from his nose.

When the three of them were alone together, Vilkas picked up the lute—or, the pieces of it. "He could have killed you."

"He was trying to kill _you_ ," she snapped.

"Why did you get in the way, Harjid?"

"No, Farkas—go home."

With a reassuring look at Harjid, he obeyed his brother, sauntering up the steps and out of sight.

Vilkas pulled her over to the lights, which flickered dangerously in the wind of the coming storm. "Why _did_ you get in the way?"

Harjid's arms tingled when he lifted her hair from her throbbing shoulder blade. She hadn't realized it had come undone in her tumble, but for the moment, she was glad.

"Answer me."

When Vilkas was angry, all she wanted to do was refuse him, but she was sure it was the worst idea she'd ever had. "He didn't earn your outburst tonight. I did. I play games with people who are too serious, and it's my fault that you took it out on him, just like it's my fault he in turn became livid with you."

She felt the air that passed through his lips on her back, and she managed to stifle a shudder as he tapped her shoulder.

"I'll have to see it inside."

"No, I don't want you to see him anymore tonight."

Vilkas clutched her wrist. "Jorrvaskr," he growled.

He was going too fast for her, she realized with annoyance. Her legs were twitching from the adrenaline, and her arms trembled all the way to her fingers.

"Please," she blurted, and he stopped to look at her. "I'm feeling very weak."

Drops of rain began to splatter against the cobbles, and Vilkas looked up at the storm, his eyes glowing. "I could carry you," he said more gently than she'd expected.

"N-no, I'll make it. Just don't take my wrist again."

Vilkas nodded and guided her in front of him with a hand at the small of her back. She struggled up the steps, but he waited for her, and once they'd crested the landing, he rushed to open a door for her.

Inside, a woman her size was brawling with one of the Dark Elf warriors, and cheers went round the hall.

Vilkas pressed a hand to her uninjured shoulder, leading her up to a staircase that descended into the private quarters of Jorrvaskr. Some old man hooted at Vilkas, asking how he'd managed to catch the bard girl, but Farkas told him to shut up, and that was the last of the commotion she could hear.

"Was that his ax?"

"Excuse me?" said Vilkas.

"The ax. Was it the one used by Ysgramor?"

"Oh. Aye, as many shards as we've been able to find."

The hallway looked too long to walk, and she wondered if she should take him up on his offer to carry her, but he turned into a wing on the right and welcomed her into a bedroom. Vilkas lit the candles on a wooden table and set one over a bed hidden by a screen. Harjid caught herself on a dresser when her legs buckled, and she meant to protest when he folded the screen to the wall and wrapped an arm around her waist to guide her onto his bed.

"You're not drunk at all."

He quirked a brow at her as he helped her down. "Why would I be drunk?"

Harjid laughed shallowly as she began unlacing the vest over her frock, but she winced as her back protested with the stretch of her muscles. "Twelve bottles of ale is considered a lot. I beg your pardon, but . . ."

Vilkas nodded once, unlacing her vest as she pulled her hair to her uninjured shoulder again. He stood behind her, and she held her breath for his diagnosis.

"You're bleeding beneath the skin."

She nodded, air escaping her pursed lips. "I've a knife in my room at the M—"

"Mine will do. You should lie down."

Harjid asked him to help her with the dress, but he said the back of it was low enough. "But I don't want to bloody it."

"I have linen," he promised.

"You should at least shut the door."

"No." He adjusted her legs once she leaned forward so he could sit beside her properly. He sniffed; the rain swelled until it competed with the rowdiness upstairs.

The blade opened her skin where the pressure was most painful, and she hissed.

"I'm hurting you."

Harjid managed another weak laugh. "It'll be worth it. It's already feeling better." He didn't answer, but she could feel the blood pooling against a cloth. "The nerves are worse," she assured him. "I avoid confrontations like that. Always."

He tutted.

"Confrontations of a physical nature," she amended.

"Smart for a girl your size."

"That woman upstairs seemed fearsome enough."

"She has more words than scars," Vilkas scoffed.

"But she doesn't turn into a nervous mess if she has to punch someone." She felt him sit up, though the linen he'd pressed to her cut was quickly being soaked through.

Vilkas stood to close the door. "Then why did you do it?"

 _Because I'm going to hire you in the morning._ "You were there to keep Farkas in line. And it wasn't fair of me to push you over it."

"Aye, but a man can't let his temper be ruled by others. And maybe I _wanted_ to hit someone."

"Then it should've been me."

"Someone who could _take it_ ," he stressed. "Now I'm spending my night treating a wound instead of snoring with a hand that wouldn't have been sore until morning."

She made to sit up, but he told her no. "Stay down, missy. I wouldn't have slept, anyway."

"Despite the eldershade draft on your table?"

"In my experience," Vilkas said, wetting and wringing out the cloth, "only two kinds of people are as observant as you."

She couldn't stop the grin he couldn't even see. "You'll be sore if I don't ask what those types are, won't you?"

"I'm of little political import, so you must not be an agent. And I have valuable possessions, but I keep on my person. And you couldn't pull them off me, anyway. Even if you were as eager to throw a punch as Njada."

"So I must be a thief?"

"Aye, but a bloody awful one. You fancy gold more than most bards I've encountered."

"You do too."

"Aye, that I do." Vilkas dropped the cloth into the bowl and pulled a glass jar out of the top drawer. "It might leave a scar, but it'll heal prettier if you use this."

"Are you suggesting I apply it myself?" Harjid held her vest against her front as she sat up.

"You could ask Hulda."

She rolled her eyes and turned her back to him. "But you and I've grown so _close_ over these past few hours."

Vilkas stalked back over to her and popped off the lid, dabbing at her raw cut delicately but with a rough finger.

Harjid's eyes closed, and a satisfied little hum escaped her. " _Thank_ you."

He grunted in some positive-sounding way and stepped back. "You can sleep here tonight."

She turned round and watched him unfasten his gorget. "Are you so eager to be friends?"

"I don't sleep anymore," he grumbled, tossing his pauldrons in the corner.

"But what if I decide your armor really is worth stealing?"

He unclipped his cuirass and drew it off, his loose undershirt lifting above his navel as he did. "Then I'll give you that bruise you say I owe you."

"Careful," she said as Vilkas tightened the laces of his breeches, "I may learn to like it by then."

"Vile creature." He opened the door.

"Vilkas?"

He pushed it back open and leaned in from the darkness of the hall. "Yeah?"

"You were right. He _was_ trying to drown me out with his flute."

"What did I tell you?" He muttered something about a milk drinker and a whistle. "Good night."

Harjid smirked, drawing the flute out of where she'd hidden it in her boot and setting it on Vilkas' shelf.


	3. Chapter 3

_I had to rewrite a few things from this chapter, so forgive me for posting and deleting. The next chapter should be up this time next week (26 Sept.), and it will be of comparable length, probably. Please keep in mind that I try to skip the parts we all know by heart, and that involves mostly the dialogue from quests. In addition, I'm going to add to areas that were a bit slim (next chapter), so do not expect this to be faithful to the game. Thank you again for your patience, and please enjoy a chapter you might have already seen._

* * *

"Who'd you bring home last night, Shield-Brother?"

Vilkas scraped some yolky bacon onto his crust of bread and shoved it into his mouth.

Aela caught the eye of Njada, who was not interested in the bed gossip, so she nudged Skjor, who was bound to care even less.

"It's Harjid, the bard girl," said Farkas.

Vilkas rolled his eyes.

"How was she?" Skjor said, just to annoy him. It worked.

With a clean plate, Vilkas picked through the fresh food and stood from the table of snickering Companions.

"Can't she make it up the stairs?" laughed Aela.

"Shut up," Farkas said, though his grin was winning out.

 _If I_ had _touched her_ , thought Vilkas as he reached the lower landing, _I'd have the sense to send her away before dawn._

Absurdly, he knocked on his own door. "Are you decent?"

"Some would say superb."

 _Of course._ "Can you answer the question instead of trying to prove how smart you are?"

"You saw everything last night."

" _Not_ everything. I'm coming in. It's your own fault if you aren't ready."

Harjid, fully clothed thank Talos, folded up a letter and set the quill on the table. "Good morning," she said without turning to him. "Do you have any jobs today, Vilkas?"

He set the plate in front of her. "Words of gratitude get bumped out of your vocabulary by Dwemeri?"

"You'll have to show me how it's done. I hear someone took a lute to the back for you last night."

Vilkas choked out a laugh and ran his tongue over his teeth. "We're even, then?"

"Nearly," she said, picking up a fork, "but you're a piece of fruit short."

"I see you made the bed." Vilkas sat beside her. "You shouldn't stress that shoulder. Will you let me take a look at it?"

She nodded, pulling her hair to her front instead of allowing him to do it. "How's it looking today?"

"Ugly."

Harjid tittered, and he licked his lips. "How long before I see the mists of Sovngarde?" she asked.

"Not soon enough. Never soon enough." He knelt to gather up his armor. "I don't have any jobs today."

"Then I have something for you, if you're interested."

"I have to take Ria on her trial sometime."

"Good. It's at Honningbrew Meadery. They have a skeever problem."

Vilkas almost dropped his bracer. "Rodents?"

"A little large for that, aren't they?"

"Companions don't kill rodents for coin."

"I'm sure Ria would."

"No." He leaned on the table. "She can't do a job without her trial first. And I'll be damned before I stand witness for a rat chaser."

"I'll give you two hundred Septims."

"Is the Thieves Guild _that_ bad off?"

Harjid scoffed. "Two-fifty?"

"I'm not smashing rats for anything less than a thousand."

"Then I'll get your brother to do it. He might like to have some of his coins back."

"I would, were I him."

"I'm not going higher than five, Vilkas."

"Then smash your own rats."

Harjid was trying very hard to look cross, but Vilkas smiled at her and ruined everything: she grinned. "How about this—you come smash the rats, then escort me to Markarth for her trial."

"For how many drakes?"

"Depends on what I get for my loot." She shrugged, then whimpered at her shoulder.

"And I'm meant to trust a thief?"

"You can trust me as far as you can throw me."

"Tempting."

"And there are lots of cliffs around Markarth."

"Then I wouldn't get my money."

"But you'd get some peace."

After she ate and he was fully armored, Vilkas followed her up to the great hall and pointed at Ria. "Get your things ready. We're escorting the bard to Markarth. Clear it with Kodlak before I get back."

Vilkas held the door for Harjid, a habit for females wearing dresses.

"But . . . when are you coming back?" Ria asked from Jelani's neck hold.

"Within the hour."

Harjid turned back inside. "Actually, dear, it'll be just after midday. But that's more time for you to pack!"

Vilkas glared at her as she pulled the door shut behind them. "Why are you giving directions to my whelps?"

"What? Those weren't directions. We have an _appointment_ , Vilkas. Come on, then, stop scowling. You looked half-dead inside and out here you're positively grotesque. Really you should consider bringing some of that eldershade draft with you."

Eorlund nodded to him as he passed them on the stairs. Harjid greeted him chipperly, but he rolled his eyes, and Vilkas couldn't hold back a smirk.

"He doesn't like you."

"And you look like a draugr today."

"Where did you ever see any draugr? Some pretty tome with gilded pages?"

"You truly are a beast."

"Heh."

Once they were outside the city gates, Vilkas followed Harjid to the horse seller, with whom she haggled until he agreed to send her letter along when the next courier passed through.

"Have some lover in Morrowind you're writing to?" he asked.

"Are you jealous?"

"I pity him. But the creatures in the ash waste are fearsome, I hear. If they brave Vvardenfell's sandstorms, they can tolerate the likes of you."

Harjid waited for him to come abreast of her before linking her arm into his. "So you're saying you're not man enough to handle me?"

"I handled you fine last night."

She grinned. "You fled like a Companion from a set of books."

"Clever girl," he drawled, "but remember that you asked for _my_ notes."

Harjid laughed, and for once, she said nothing more. "Don't talk to the greasy one," she whispered before she opened the door, which Vilkas was annoyed to realize he was holding as she passed under his arm.

The proprietor sneered from behind the bar. "You're late."

"I don't think so," Harjid said. "Your appointment isn't until noon."

There was a man sweeping in the corner who looked more like a draugr than Vilkas, certainly; he didn't like the way the man's eyes followed the interaction between the owner and Harjid.

"Come on, Vilkas." She had the key, and he gave both of the mead makers a second glance before he followed her out.

"I don't like this," he whispered to her as she unlocked the basement.

"I don't either."

Once inside, Vilkas covered his nose and coughed.

"What's the matter?" she asked with a brow raised in amusement.

"You don't smell that?"

"I smell mead and something musky, which I thought was you."

"You're hilarious. It's sickening."

Harjid started down some steps, where the smell strengthened. "Better get to it, then."

Vilkas unsheathed his blade, and two skeevers were dead before they could pounce. "How many _are_ there?"

"I don't see any more."

"No, but they're here. Move." He knelt beside a hole in a patch of wooden beams that had once covered a tunnel. "This is all rotted."

"They're coming from behind it."

Vilkas banged the pommel of his sword against the wood, which wilted like paper and gave way with little effort. "Stand back!"

The whole tunnel beyond was moving. A swarm of them, diseased by the smell, lunged and bit and hissed at him, and he was fine until one of the sickly skinny ones slipped between his boots and out to Harjid.

"Look out! Get outside and don't—"

"Got him!"

He couldn't chance a look back. "How'd you manage that, milk drinker?"

"With that pretty little blade I told you about!"

"Oh," he grunted, slamming his own sword into a pair of infected Frostbite spiders, "I thought you might have brought your lute."

"I've just killed my second one, so please concentrate, because I'm getting very tired."

Vilkas tried to laugh, but it came out breathy; he was trying to breathe through his mouth to avoid smelling them as much as he could. The more he killed, though, the harder he heaved. "They don't appear to be stopping."

"Maybe I should go back for Ria."

"N-no." He pushed a skewered ribcage off his blade. "Just good you extended the deadline." He could smell something almost moldy through it all; he gagged, and a skeever's tooth impaled the skin between his thumb and forefinger through his gauntlet. Vilkas swore and slammed it against the wall, but the damn thing held on, and six or seven still head-butted his shins.

He had to take his sword with only his left hand, and he was unbalanced already with the creatures slamming against his boots, and his good hand was throbbing, and suddenly there was a knife in the eye of the skeever that was biting him, and Harjid wrestled it off.

"Careful you don't get bit, girl!"

"Speak for yourself. Give me _that_!" Harjid took his sword, shoved the hilt of her dagger into his left hand, and started swinging at the remaining rats, finally decapitating the last one in the clumsiest swing he'd ever seen.

"Are you hurt?" he said between breaths, and she shrugged.

"I'm pretty sweaty." She wiped her forehead on her sleeve. "That's going to need looked at properly."

"Aye."

"We have to go this way," she said, and he held out her dagger. "What?"

"You're going to give me back my sword and carry this stupid thing instead."

"That 'stupid thing' just saved your favored hand."

"There are spiders down there."

"How can you tell?"

"Look at the webs."

"Oh. But you're really in no shape to fight."

"Don't argue. I can take a spider with my eyes closed."

"So take it with a dagger, one-handed."

"Give it to me now."

Harjid inched her way down the tunnel. "Come get it."

Vilkas sighed and waded through the mess of skeevers to join her at the bottom, where she squinted through the webs.

"Do you see that?" she whispered.

He leaned next to her to see where she'd indicated, then knocked her on her seat as he took his sword back, dropping the dagger at her feet and running through the webs at the lunatic working at an alchemy lab.

He, apparently, had heard them coming in the tunnel.

Vilkas fell to his knees, violet bolts of magic jerking over his body and popping in the opening on his hand, making his arms curl into his chest.

"Vilkas!"

 _No._ He couldn't yell, though time itself seemed to slow, taunting him with the hope that he might muster enough strength to tell her to turn back.

The alchemist pointed his other hand over Vilkas, back the way he'd come; Vilkas tried to control his jerking enough to land facing Harjid, but he landed wrong, then heard a roar that he couldn't explain. _Am I changing?_ The beast blood was rising in his heart, drowning out his thoughts, and just as quickly as it began, the pain stopped.

He fought with which to prioritize—halting his transformation or turning to see what had happened to the alchemist. His body still twitched with the magicka, and his stomach lurched, trying to expel his breakfast.

Harjid knelt before him and put her hand on his cheek, but drew away when she was shocked too. She was saying something, but he couldn't hear her over his pulse, and he coughed in an attempt to breathe. He felt his nose crinkling as it always did before he gave in to the beast blood, and Harjid was shushing him, and he tried to focus on that, but his breaths just kept coming shallower until she slapped him across his face.

The surprise of it jarred him out of his transformation, and judging by her look of pity and not fear, he hadn't begun the outward change just yet.

"I'm sorry," she said, and he could only blink at her as he caught his breath. "I didn't know what else to do." She brushed wet hair out of his eyes and sat with him until he could get upright.

"You did great," he wheezed. "I was—" He coughed again. "I was a fool."

She smiled at him, and when it looked like that, it wasn't so bad. "Can you stand?"

"In a moment. Did you know about him?"

Harjid shook her head.

"What was that noise?"

She opened her mouth, but she closed it before shrugging.

"Did it come out of him?"

She shook her head again.

" _You_?"

"Not very ladylike, was it?"

He laughed into another coughing fit. "It got the job done. Are you strong enough to pull me up?"

"I guess we'll see."

She wasn't, but her efforts were kind, even if they were dripping with pity.

"Don't forget the nest, there, missy."

"Right."

He limped toward a path in the wall. "I suppose we follow this?"

They came out into a room of vats, and she told him to go on ahead. "The key should be on the hook. Meet me out in the yard."

Vilkas found a spot right under a window on the side of the meadery and slid down the wall, his heart still pounding. The air smelled of flowers and honey, yet now he smelled of the cave and its dead. Harjid sat beside him when she came out, and they panted there, blinking against the sunlight until the greasy-haired assistant came to them.

"You fall asleep on all your jobs?"

Vilkas nudged her awake, and she rounded on the man she called Mallus. Vilkas was nodding in and out, and he didn't know if it was the beast blood's effect or the remnants of magicka. He blinked awake a moment later, and Harjid was no longer red-faced or screaming, though she was still dirty.

"Hey," she smiled again, pressing her hand to his forehead. "How are you feeling?"

"It's a good thing you brought him," Mallus was saying out of sight. "Glad I suggested it."

"I didn't know how necessary he'd come to be," she spat back. "Help me get him up."

#

Vilkas awoke naked in his own bed, lying on his stomach and hugging his pillow to his face like he had when he was young, before his mother stopped walking. His eyes kept closing as soon as he opened them, but he managed it enough times to see he was alone and his hand was bandaged. He lay there a while longer, reveling in the comfort before too many questions collected in his head and he needed their answers. His head swam, but once fully upright, he felt fine, if still groggy.

A pair of scissors that belonged to Tilma—since the First Era of Men—lay on his table beside candles burnt down to stubs. In his bucket lay scraps of bloodied gauze. Tilma hadn't patched anyone up in years—not since her eyes were too bad for her to read. Vilkas almost grinned, as it had been a while since she'd asked him to read her the old romances, and he determined to indulge her the next chance he got.

Upstairs, dressed in breeches and an undershirt, Vilkas found only his brother and Torvar still eating; everyone else had gone off to train or work a job.

"Hey."

Vilkas gave a lazy wave to his twin in reply.

"Shor's balls," Torvar swore, pulling Black-Briar mead from his lips, "you look a hundred times better than yesterday."

"I live to impress," Vilkas grumbled, filling a plate with cold food. "Either of you know who patched my hand?"

"I told her it was too much," said Farkas.

"Did she have you give me eldershade, too?"

" _She_ gave it to you 'cos you knocked it outta my hand."

It made sense: his mistrust of his brother's mental abilities ran so deep, they were subconscious, and Harjid was the last person he remembered seeing. Maybe he felt that ingesting whatever she offered him was part of the job; he really couldn't figure out how else he might rationalize it—trusting a thief over his own brother . . . by the Divines.

"I'm waiting for you to tell me how I ended up nude, Farkas."

"She told me to make you comfortable." That was how Farkas slept, whether a woman lay beside him or not.

With little help from his wrapped hand, he downed a few links of sausage before he spoke again. "Where's Ria?"

"Went with Harjid."

Vilkas shot up. "To Markarth?"

"No."

"Where then?" he said through gritted teeth.

"Gettin' a horse."

Vilkas sat stupidly, Torvar giggling like a girl. "Am I supposed to meet them at the Mare?"

"Don't know."

Vilkas finished his breakfast as fast as his hand would allow and went to pack. He unwound his bandages, finding clean stitches on a wound that itched more than hurt. It wasn't her fault, really; how would she know he couldn't contract any diseases?

She and Ria were waiting for him when he reappeared upstairs, but he had to look twice, for she was in breeches and a leather jerkin with white sleeves underneath. Vilkas wondered for a moment if she'd stolen from his dresser, but leathers fit her too well, so he put Tilma's scissors in the table by the back door and kissed the old woman on her cheek as she passed him.

"You don't look like a draugr anymore," Harjid said as Ria chatted with Farkas.

"You don't look like a girl anymore."

She laughed, her fingers going to her smart little collar. "Ready?"

Farkas always liked to hug him before they parted for travel beyond the Hold, but he'd been snapped at enough times to await Vilkas' silent acquiescence, which, since Torvar had left, he gave.

"Take care of my brother," Farkas teased Ria, and she flexed her bicep to his guffaw.

"See you in a few days," said Harjid, and they were off. Just outside the gates, a Khajiiti caravan had set up a ring of yurts, and she traipsed right up to the one in the center, with an old cat sitting cross-legged on a rug.

"You return so soon?" the Khajiit purred, taking Harjid's hands in hers.

"I was hoping you could do me a favor." Harjid offered up a few drakes and yet another damn letter.

"I've never seen a Khajiit up close," Ria said to him as he watched Harjid whisper with the cat.

"Not particularly interesting, are they?" he said back, hoping to hear what Harjid was saying.

"Oh, I think they're great!"

"Quiet."

Harjid turned back to them with a flush and a grin. "Sorry, more business with the Guild. Let's get my horse, shall we?"

Vilkas couldn't help that it had bothered him, and finally it was too much. "They aren't charging enough."

Harjid and Ria exchanged looks.

"The caravan. Cats won't get to Riften on six drakes."

"Well, maybe they can," said Ria. "I'm only bringing twenty with me."

"Aye, but we have rooms to rent," Vilkas said as Harjid strapped her bag to the horse's saddle.

"We're not going to rent rooms."

Vilkas feigned surprise. "You mean we're going to sleep out in this treacherous wasteland?"

Somewhere under the bridge, a frog croaked, and Ria bit back a smile.

Harjid only sighed. "You're about as charming as a sabre cat."

Once they were on the road, Ria wasted no time in beginning a story about her fa and ma, "up Solitude way." Harjid made the expected polite noises, which meant he didn't have to bother with either of them.

The horse held all their packs, and Vilkas was almost grateful; he noted one of the bags was clinking with Dwemeri pots.

"What'll you name her?" Ria asked, stroking the mare's snout.

"I, um . . . I wasn't going to."

Ria laughed. "What are we supposed to call her? She looks like a 'Honeysuckle.'"

"Absolutely not," Harjid said, startling Vilkas with her tone.

Ria hesitated, and Harjid's voice softened again.

"I'm sorry, dear, I just don't name something I might have to eat."

Ria looked horrified, and Vilkas laughed harder than he had that morning, when he'd found that flute on his shelf.

#

Ria had taken to Honeysuckle and so was put in charge of leading her. Of course, that meant that Harjid was free to walk beside him, and that posed a danger that she may start talking, and a headache was the last thing he needed on a trial job.

"You should ride," he said to Harjid. "Ria and I can keep up, if you don't gallop."

Harjid refused. "I'm a poor rider, and I only brought the horse for—"

"Honeysuckle!"

"—Carrying our things. I'll sell her back when we return."

"We would get there faster if you rode it."

Ria muttered its name behind him.

"But this is more time we get to spend _together._ "

"There's no reason to fight, you two," said Ria. "This can be a fun trip."

"This is a _job_ , Ria," Vilkas drawled.

"I'm having fun," Harjid said.

By nightfall, they'd only just reached the road to Rorikstead. Vilkas had sent Ria to shoot an elk while he set up camp—not because he wanted to be alone with Harjid of all miserable people, but because he was positive he couldn't take much more of the girl's talking. Ria was capable and more than nice, but the last Companion he'd gone with on a trial was Athis, who'd taken Vilkas' lead and spoken only when necessary.

Harjid put her bundle of firewood in the pit he'd dug and began arranging the logs for a fire. Vilkas finished his second walk of the perimeter and set his and Ria's bags on their respective bedrolls, but when he approached Honeysuckle to grab Harjid's, he was told not to touch it.

"Then let me," he snapped, holding out his hand for her flint and striker.

Harjid huffed after one more try, then grabbed her pack and sat on her mat, probably writing her songs.

"You know, up close, that mountain looks almost as big as the Throat."

Vilkas turned. "Where's the food?"

Ria held up a limp rabbit. "Sorry! But you can have all of this. I have some deer jerky in my pack."

"There's enough there for all of us," he replied, jabbing a thumb at Harjid. "She saw some snowberries back that way."

"Oh, great!" Ria offered to let him skin and skewer it and found her seat, looking from him to Harjid a few times before continuing her thought: "What do you think, it's half the size of the Throat?"

Vilkas hesitated in answering. "I doubt it." He felt that sounded harsh. "But it could be that the plains around it are tricking your eye. You'll see mountains in the Reach you'll swear are of a height with High Hrothgar."

"Ooh, who do you think it _is_?" Ria was all excitement. "Vignar said this is the first time the Greybeards have summoned anyone since Tiber Septim!"

Vilkas looked at Harjid, who was scratching away at her parchment with a stick of charcoal, cradling a book in her lap. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, you were asleep," said Ria. "I forgot. But I was sure it would've woken you."

Vilkas turned to Harjid. "What is she talking about?"

Harjid opened her mouth, but Ria was already answering: "The Greybeards used their Thu'um!"

"Why?" Of course he'd been asleep. He had a mind that Sheogorath was behind this; an historian sleeping through the most significant event since the sacrifice of Martin Septim was an irony only the Daedra Prince could craft.

"Vignar said they were summoning the Last Dragonborn."

Vilkas heard Harjid twitch, and he closed his mouth before he could gasp. She met his eyes, and he realized he'd heard something more significant than the Greybeards' summons that day under the meadery—the Last Dragonborn's very first Shout. _It can't be._

She had trouble killing a skeever with a _claymore_ , for Shor's sake.

#

 _Of course._

Of course she needed to make a detour. Of course that detour would be Rorikstead, and of course it would add another day to their journey. Of course she wouldn't explain herself. And of course, no matter how he threatened her, she didn't change her mind.

"I'm paying _you_." She poked him in the chest as Ria gathered up the bags. "Do you even care why we're going to Markarth?"

"I _care_ ," he sneered, "that you're wasting _time_. Don't you have more important places to be?"

Neither had told Ria, and if Harjid didn't volunteer the information—which he found wise, Divines help him—then he wouldn't tell her, either. Besides, it wasn't him they'd summoned.

"I've spent the last of my gold for protection _by you_ ," Harjid spat, "and until I'm back in Whiterun, you will _continue_ to protect me."

"Aye, we will. But you spent the last of your gold on that animal."

"Honeysu—"

"Not now," he barked at Ria.

"And I'm selling her back! Why are you making this difficult?"

He got close so only she could hear: "Because if that were my name they called, I'd be walking in to Hrothgar right now."

"So you go if you want it that much."

"It doesn't work like that!" he yelled. "Damn Imperials."

#

The sun was setting over the mountains and, he thought bitterly, the valley where he knew Markarth to be. He and Ria and _that woman_ were just arriving in Rorikstead, and he hadn't said a word since morning. Harjid had directed them to wait at the crest of the hill, right in the middle of the road while she met with Rorik's wife.

"What do you suppose they're doing?" Ria asked, watching the fieldworkers in the distance.

"They're picking peas."

"No, I mean Harjid and the owner's wife. They must be planning something."

Vilkas shook his head, keeping the workers in sight. "Rorik doesn't have a wife."

Ria's mouth fell open. "Then what's she—"

"Don't worry about it. If she steals anything, we'll report it." Once he looked over at her, he hoped no one would stop to talk with them; Ria was straining to keep a straight face.

"Off we go!" blurted Harjid, grabbing a shoulder of either Companion from behind. Vilkas started, angry that he hadn't smelled her, though she had come from downwind. Ria screamed.

The fieldworkers finally noticed them _. But after the deed is done,_ Vilkas thought with annoyance. "Steal anything worth bragging about?"

"Just snuck a garnet from one chest to the other." She smiled and looked him in the eye. "And that, good sir, isn't even a crime."

"Lockpicking is."

"Oh, stuff it, would you? Right here." Harjid touched the corner of his mouth, and he swatted her away.

#

Daylight still lay an hour away when the mountains opened before them into Markarth. Ria stabled Honeysuckle and took up the bags, offering to carry Harjid's. Vilkas rolled his eyes and as the man, had to offer to take it, but Harjid refused graciously. He would've seen through it from Hammerfell.

"We're not going to take your loot," he spat.

"I told you: I didn't steal from Rorik."

They started up the steps to the gate. "Aye, but you're coming a long way to see a court wizard. At least if the city's locked, we won't have to stay out here." He turned back to the stable. "Is that why you needed the horse? To carry home your bags of gold?"

Harjid unslung her bag from the shoulder he'd patched up for her only a few nights ago. "And what makes _your_ people any different? At least ours don't _kill_."

Vilkas scoffed. "It's the people who've known only luxury that think nothing is worse than death."

The sleepy guards pulled open one of the gates, and Vilkas supposed Ria began to _ooh_ and _aah_ to distract them from bickering. Mist still hung low over the cobblestone streets, and a lone merchant was setting up a cart of fresh kills.

"Jarl won't be accepting anyone until the sun's higher up," Vilkas said.

"You're right." Harjid led them to the Silver-Blood Inn, but even the proprietor was asleep, and they had to wait for him to dress before he'd talk to them.

"You Vilkas?"

He eyed the innkeeper; no weapon. "Aye."

He nodded once and handed him a letter. "Courier dropped this off yesterday afternoon."

Vilkas shot Harjid a look, but she grabbed Ria and mumbled about a few winks of sleep, and Ria wished him a good night. He wandered into his room and considered shedding his armor before he opened the letter; whatever it was, it wouldn't be good news.

He broke the seal and rubbed his bristly face as he read, then stormed out to the girls' room to pound on their door. "Ria! Get up, we're leaving!"

"She isn't going anywhere," came Harjid's muffled voice.

"It's an order! _Even for me._ "

Ria opened the door, but Harjid held out her hand.

"Let's see it."

"This is Companion business," he seethed. "Farkas and Jelani were ambushed at Dustman's Cairn."

Ria gasped. "Are they okay?"

"Aye, but the group that did it is after any Companion they can find, so we have to go."

Ria looked over to Harjid, who was pale. "Aren't we honor-bound to—"

"No, he's right. Let's leave immediately." Harjid wasn't looking at him. "Who did it?"

He stuttered. "You wouldn't know them."

#

Vilkas seethed in front of Understone Keep. Harjid's idea of "immediately" must have been some Khajiiti interpretation, because she and Ria had been in there for an hour. Vilkas refused to leave without Ria, who refused to leave without Harjid, who refused to leave without her gold.

He'd thought of offering her a refund when it seemed she was leaving without selling her loot. The higher the sun climbed, though, the less he cared about fairness to the client, who must've faked her concern for the Companions' wellbeing.

"It's about damn time!" he barked when the girls emerged, one sporting a hefty bag of jingling coins.

"Would you shut up?"

"Come on, you guys, there's no need—"

"She's putting you and me in danger the longer we're away from Jorrvaskr," Vilkas told Ria. "And I'm pretty damn eager to see my brother."

They followed Harjid out to the courtyard beyond the gates, and she struck up a conversation with the stablemaster there.

"For the love of Ysgramor, woman!"

But she was handing the man her bag of coins. He counted it while his boy saddled up a gelding, and Harjid thanked the man, all the while not looking at Vilkas.

She bought him a horse.

#

He rode his gelding with the bags all strapped to his saddle while the girls doubled up on Honeysuckle. Every time they stopped to water the horses, Vilkas insisted Harjid take a refund, but she kept refusing and still hadn't met his eye. He'd have to think of something after this Silver Hand business was settled.

He puzzled over the ambush for the whole ride. Skjor never said where they got the lead on the fragment of Wuuthrad. Vilkas guessed he'd rather be caught by the Silver Hand than wonder who'd tipped them off. He couldn't think of anyone who might have any hint of the Circle's secret. And the only person who would hold a grudge against him was riding beside him. Except— _What was his name?_ Mikael.

Vilkas looked over to Harjid, who held fast to Ria as they galloped. Would she have . . ? No. She had no love for Mikael; she'd stolen his flute. He was _absolutely_ going to repay her for the laugh he'd never admit she gave him.

They were passing Ria's mountain when they had to water the horses for the last sprint to Whiterun, and he'd insisted she ask something of him for the financial losses of her trip. She'd been bashful, which was almost charming, and finally handed him a folded paper and asked if he'd translate it.

"It's only a foreword."

He looked her in the eye. _Finally_. "Of course."

She offered to stable his horse ("Chestnut!" Ria insisted), and he wanted nothing more than to tear through the streets to Jorrvaskr, but suspicion was the last thing they needed.

Everything at home looked the same. Skjor was leaning over Farkas, who nursed an ale at the great table, and Aela was correcting Athis' shooting form right inside the door, and Tilma was just getting off her favorite bench to get him and Ria a cup of tea, no honey in his. Skjor and Farkas and Aela followed him to his room, and he threw his bag on the bed, and Kodlak was waiting in his parlor, and finally Vilkas asked who sent them to Dustman's Cairn.

It was a letter signed by "A friend" with familiar handwriting.

He felt his heartbeat through every part of his body, and he saw Aela's lips move, but he couldn't hear anything except his own breath. He should pray it wouldn't match, then he thought absurdly that he would pray later, as right now, he _had_ to see if it would match.

The page she'd asked him to translate shook in his hand; she'd written it in Ancient Nordic, and he looked for anything he might compare to the modern letters, and his eyes flashed on something that made his breath hitch, but he must be wrong, mustn't he?

The translation came from _Herbane's Beastiary: Werewolves._

Before he realized he'd left, he was pounding on her door at the Bannered Mare, and she was shouting at him to be quiet, and he shook her by the shoulders and asked her how she knew.

"You've just told me."

* * *

 _Thank you for all the comments! This piece will probably be around 30,000 words (across 10 chapters), so we still have a long way to go. Forgive me for focusing on something other than the Companions questline; we'll be seeing a little of the Thieves Guild, but a significant portion of the Dragonborn quest._

 _You're all too kind._


	4. Chapter 4

His body radiated heat all around her, his hands on either side of her head, their chests heaving in time, faces a whisper's breadth apart.

"Who have you told?"

Harjid wanted to back away, but she already pressed against the wall. "What? No one, of course! Why would I?"

"Secrets are Septims," Vilkas sneered.

She scoffed. "You would be killed, and so would everyone else in the Circle. You know I don't believe in that."

"How long have you known?"

"Since Mikael." _It's why I still can't sleep on my back, bloody ingrate._

He lowered his face, almost grazing her chest with his forehead, then looked her in the eye. "Explain."

She wanted to tell him to move, but just in case he was close to losing his grip on his humanity, she obliged; she owed him that much, at least. "The letters contained nothing of my suspicions. I only asked a fellow Guildmember for the book and the location of the fragments of Wuuth—"

"So you admit you sent it."

"Would you let me—look, the Guild has bigger problems right now than acting on archives' leads. Vekel sent me the location thinking I'd sell you the pieces after I went in and got them myself, okay? I thought I'd let your people get them instead. Cut out the middle man and I keep my dress clean."

Vilkas looked up in exasperation. "Why would a thief pass up gold?"

"Because maybe I felt that I owed you after the mess at the meadery. The book and Vekel's directions came the day you were asleep. All I had to do was deliver the directions somehow."

"The caravan."

"Six drakes. Hardly a deal."

"Why all the secrecy? You could've just given us the directions to Wuuthrad."

Harjid couldn't help her head tilting with her disbelief. "And how would that have looked if the place was booby-trapped, or as it was, with the ambush? Besides, if you don't know who gave you the lead, you wouldn't have to repay me another favor."

Vilkas removed one hand from the wall—her cheek felt almost cold without it—and pointed right in her face as he spoke: "If you ever come to Jorrvaskr again, I'll kill you."

And he was gone, the hearth yawning cold and empty beside her. She shut her door just as Vilkas slammed the one downstairs. Harjid shakily drew a log from the pile, then threw against the bricks inside the fireplace, then another, and another, and another, until she was hot again and crying. Saadia called from out on the stairs, and Harjid's voice went back, but weakly. The door opened, and Harjid saw the girl suppress the urge to rush over to her, but she came after a moment, anyway.

"Did he hurt you?"

"What? No, of course not. That wouldn't be _honorable_."

Saadia nodded but pursed her lips. "I know how you feel. Don't ask, but I do."

Harjid doubted that very much; being groped by drunken patrons was hardly the same thing, but she couldn't say as much. "Thank you."

Saadia continued, Harjid mentally kicking herself for not giving her something else to work with. "Makes me wonder how they treat the females of their order. Horribly, right?"

Harjid shook her head. "No, they . . . no." She almost smiled. "Saadia, thank you for sitting with me. I need to be alone now."

#

Farkas grinned when he saw her come into the great hall, and Harjid greeted him cautiously, but he treated her like an old friend.

"I didn't think you were allowed to talk to me," she explained after he released her.

"Oh. How come?"

 _He didn't tell anyone._ Harjid didn't know if that meant he was protecting her or himself. "Just because I brought you some trouble at the tavern not long ago."

"Wasn't too much." He had a lovely smile, and she thought how strange it'd be to see it on his brother.

"I know big men like you can handle a great deal. Is your Harbinger around?"

"Yeah."

 _Sweet boy's nothing like his twin._ "May I speak with him?"

"Sure. You joining the Companions, Harjid?" he asked as he led her to the staircase.

"Do you think I could?"

He stared ahead for a moment when they entered the hall. "I think you could," he said finally.

"Thanks, Farkas."

As they approached the end of the corridor, Harjid was distressed to see Vilkas snarling at her from beside Kodlak Whitemane. _You expected as much, idiot,_ she told herself. _Confrontation was part of the plan._ She found herself holding Farkas' forearm, though she was certain he hadn't offered it.

Kodlak finished saying something to Vilkas, but Harjid was sure he heard even less of it than she had. "Good morning, Farkas," said Kodlak. "And welcome back to Jorrvaskr, my dear."

 _He doesn't remember my name._ She began to address him, but Vilkas interrupted her.

"What are you doing here?"

"Vilkas, have patience. What can the Companions do for you, young lady?"

"Harjid wants to join us." This interruption from Farkas.

Kodlak looked like he had to take away her doll. "If that's so, she should have strength enough to say it herself."

Harjid untangled herself from Farkas. "Thank you for your gallantry." Speaking those words were merely a habit and therefore no proof that she had the strength the Harbinger awaited. Blue eyes boring into either side of her head didn't help. "I know I may not look like much," she began, stepping away from the bigger of the brothers, "but I can handle myself."

"You required my escort for a visit to _Rorikstead_ ," Vilkas said.

"That was a journey to _Markarth_ , and if you recall, we passed quite a few camps of Forsworn. But you're not the Harbinger, are you? So stay out of this."

Kodlak chortled. "My dear, I'm afraid putting Vilkas in his place, though its own kind of bravery, is not quite what the Companions are looking for. I'm sorry."

 _And there goes the plan._ "You've never seen me fight." She hadn't meant to blurt that; anyone who had seen her fight would suggest she stick to songs.

"I didn't know you could fight," Farkas said in all earnestness, his brother's muffled laughter all too audible beside her.

"But you're desperate for members," Harjid said, and Kodlak shrugged.

"We may not have five hundred, but the honor of the men and women we do have leads the bravest to our doors when Ysgramor sees fit."

She felt that frantic energy bubbling up her throat again, but she didn't want to eviscerate Kodlak or even Vilkas the way she had the madman in the meadery's tunnels. She inhaled and spoke with her own voice: "I am the Dragonborn."

Kodlak was inclined to smile at first, but Vilkas' grip tightening on his tankard seemed to do the trick. "Is this true?"

Vilkas nodded. "But she's _Thieves_ _Guild_."

"You are?" Farkas asked.

"Yes," said Harjid as Kodlak leaned back in his chair, "I rely on my anonymity. Companions rely on their reputation. I would love for everything pertaining to the Dragonborn to lay with the Companions, not with me. You would boost membership, and I can continue to live my life."

Kodlak, his chin on his thumb and fingers grazing his temple, seemed to watch her for a long time; Harjid had nothing more to offer, and any insistence of her previous points she knew would only make her look more desperate and, therefore, weak.

"Sir, you aren't seriously considering this jumped-up bandit—"

"It's never too late to change one's ways," Kodlak snapped, and Vilkas glowered. "Understand," the Harbinger continued, "you are not to steal or perform the business of your Guild while on our jobs or any Dragonborn business."

Harjid could only nod; any speech would probably betray her relief.

"Will you be able to help yourself?" sneered Vilkas.

"I'm not the one with the temper of an _animal_ ," she spat back, though a bit startled by herself.

Kodlak called for quiet. "You were summoned to High Hrothgar, miss. Do you know what that means?"

"I do."

Vilkas tutted, and Farkas broke his silence. "Vilkas knows all about Hrothgar. And the Greybeards." He put a hand on Harjid's arm. "You should have him take you to them. He's a good teacher, aren't you, brother?"

"Farkas—"

"I don't think your brother wants to g—"

Vilkas and Harjid were interrupted by Kodlak's single knock on his table. "A fine idea," he said to their bewilderment. "You'll teach her about the legends, show her a few things, toughen her up. Climbing the Seven Thousand Steps as a trial—truly singular."

"Skjor is due for a whelp," said Vilkas. "I have Ria."

"Yeah, but Skjor hates climbing mountains," said Farkas. "And you read those Tiber Septim books all the time."

"Spending time with an order of silent pacifists may do you good, boy," Kodlak pointed out. "Besides, as Farkas said, you're the historian around here."

#

They were three days from Whiterun, and no matter how close they came to Riften, the shadow of the Throat of the World could still reach them.

He, of course, hadn't spoken to her since they'd reached the Rift, which suited her; when he had spoken, it was to tell her how cowardly she was for not just going to High Hrothgar alone, and to belittle her for what, in his grumbled opinion, was direct disobedience to the Harbinger; no matter that she was going to the Ragged Flagon to quit a heist job, and forget that it may be her last chance to say goodbye to her family, or as good as. Not that Vilkas could see; to him, only the Companions were worthy of someone's regard.

Vilkas dismounted Chestnut, handing the reins to a stable boy and rounding on Harjid for the hundredth time that morning. "This entire hold smells of rot. And the flies! Why did anyone ever come here?"

"Charming as always," said Harjid as Vilkas steadied Honeysuckle for her to dismount, too. She ignored his hand, which he absently held aloft for her to balance with as she came down. "You must know that the Guild chose Riften only to displease you."

"Aye, and the gods chose a woman like you to save us all, but we have to wait for you to ask permission of a few cutpurses." He led the way to the city gates, but the guards didn't let them pass.

"What's your business here?"

Vilkas raised his brows. "I thought you lived here, little miss."

"Aye, she does," the guard replied. "But you don't."

Harjid began to recite the story she'd preemptively crafted for this very situation, but Vilkas lowered his face to meet the guard at eye level.

"You'll open the door, boy," he growled, "or I'll make your arms stop working."

Harjid sputtered. "They don't respond well to thr—"

The doors opened, and Vilkas went through, haughty as a Black-Briar.

"That doesn't usually happen," Harjid said behind him.

"I doubt it."

"No, I mean—of course the hazing happens, but usually they beat people who disregard them."

Vilkas spat. "Vermin."

Harjid didn't like to agree, so she kept it to herself. "It's this way," she said, leading Vilkas down the street; Maul gave them his best glare, Vilkas not bothering to acknowledge it. Mjoll waved at her from the bridge, Aerin beside her

"Are you heading to your prayers, Lady Harjid?"

"Of course," Harjid called, Vilkas' judgment burning her face. "The gods need a daily reminder of their own greatness, you know!"

Vilkas followed her through the temple's walkway and out to the mausoleum in the cemetery. "This is it, isn't it?"

"Well, it's a secret, of course."

"I'm not going in."

"Don't be ridiculous." Harjid bent to push the button, but Vilkas grabbed her arm and yanked her back, pulling her as close as he'd been to the guard at the gate.

"I will not defile these graves with your underhanded business," he seethed.

Harjid caught in her periphery the priestess wandering about Talos' shrine, and hurriedly held to Vilkas' waist and turned her face away to speak, tensing up her shoulders in an imitation of sobbing. "I can't let you just wait out here, now that she's about. She'll get suspicious."

Vilkas pushed her back by the shoulders. "I'll not do it."

A huff escaped her. "Fine. We'll just have to use the visitors' way."

"Harjid, my daughter."

 _Damn._ "Lady Drifa, good morning!"

The Dunmer smiled, though pity kept it dim. "No need to put on a brave face, child. Weeping for the dead is natural, though a little naïve."

"Yes, you are right. Praise Mara! I am only human."

Vilkas snorted, and Harjid almost rolled her eyes at him—now that he'd caught Drifa's attention, they would be here awhile.

"And who is this handsome gentleman?"

"He is Vilkas, Lady Drifa. Quite the writer."

Drifa pressed a kiss to his forehead, though the beads of sweat were visible even to Harjid, standing a little away. Vilkas handled the breech in Nordic custom deftly, at least, with a blush and mumbled thanks.

"Welcome to Riften, Vilkas. What brings 'quite a writer' to our city?"

"The tint of sunrise on copper leaves, Drifa! I knew Vilkas had to see the beauty of the Rift at this time of year. It's inspired a song or two in me, so he'll certainly find something to capture as well."

If he looked displeased the first time she called him a writer, he grew positively murderous the second.

"Our home is a lovely place. Though it saddens the gods that the Thieves Guild has so suddenly chosen it as their base of operation." Harjid bit her tongue. "Do be careful if you must venture to the Ratway, Harjid. Though I daresay if I were going there, I would be happy to be doing so with someone carrying such a large sword!"

Harjid forced a laugh, inching ever away from the priestess. Vilkas didn't catch the hint, and instead offered the Companions for hire to rid the Ratway of its unsavory characters. Harjid shot him a look, but before one of the filthy things in her head could triumph over the others to reach her mouth first, Drifa replied.

"Must even the gods pay for the services of the Companions if they have seen fit to give you life?"

Harjid hid her exhale, thanking those same gods for choosing cheap servants.

"Tell you what," said Vilkas, and Harjid tried—and due to his hand over her mouth, failed—to interrupt. "I'll head down that way to see how rough it is, and if I can afford to give you a discount, I will send word to you."

Drifa grinned more fully than Harjid had ever seen her. "Finding such devout souls makes me—and Mara—very happy. You know, Harjid is one of our most devout young ladies here in Riften. And you wouldn't think it, but that loud fellow in the marketplace, Brynjolf? He's very devout too. He and Harjid are always out here, praying and praising the names of the Divines. It is nice to see that she has found a man as religious as she."

Harjid was yessing her along, putting her arm through Vilkas' to turn him toward the square.

"People don't realize how much I see in this cemetery, do they, Harjid?"

"No, certainly n—"

"But I see quite a lot! Oh, and you two—Mara smiles upon you both."

Vilkas tried to object, but Harjid only thanked Lady Drifa and gave an overzealous goodbye. She zipped down the grassy path back to the main street when Vilkas turned her around and pinned her to the wall of Aerin's house. "What was that about?" he hissed.

"Why do you always _touch me_?" Harjid smacked his hand away just to get in his face. "Next time you forget propriety, I'll cleave off one of your meaty fingers."

" _Propriety_? I didn't just lie through my teeth to a servant of the Divines!"

"What did I lie about? And since when do you care about any god beyond Talos?"

Vilkas counted off from his little finger. "You lied about why we're here, who I am, our—" He scoffed. "Our _familiarity_ , and your own devotion to the gods."

"Well, how about you? You offered to kill my entire Guild! For a discount!"

His nose wrinkled. "Priests never order a job from us because they never want to pay! I was crafting an alibi for us so she doesn't think I'm part of your band of criminals."

"So that's allowed, but letting her assume you're a writer is completely distasteful?"

"To tell her I'm a writer undercuts my reputation as a swordsman. You yourself recognize that my work depends on my reputation. And to suggest that two Companions are . . . it's disgusting."

"Is it? Your brother doesn't think so. And in any case, I'm sure she was talking about Brynjolf, not you."

Vilkas put his tongue on a molar. "My _brother_? You're unbelievable, you know that? Not everyone likes you as much as you like yourself."

"Not me, you idiot! Ria." She watched as he cycled through memories and the truth finally dawned on his face. "Are we done with this? We could've been leaving the city by now, but you had to correct the implications of your reputation with someone you'll likely never see again." She turned onto the street, and Vilkas followed her out.

"I just explained to y—"

"Yes, yes, I know. _Reputation_. We have too hard a journey ahead of us to be having this much trouble already."

They descended the stairs by the orphanage, and Harjid went to the barrel beside the Ratway entrance; she was sure there had been a torch in there when she first came to find the Ragged Flagon; someone must've had to use it. Thinking of them made her pause before she opened the door. "Vilkas? You know that if anyone took a job to hurt the people I love here, I'll tell everyone your secret."

He rolled his eyes. "I know that."

Harjid nodded, and in they went. She certainly didn't remember it being so dark, but it had been years since she used this way; at least whoever took the torch hadn't gone far. At the bottom of the steps, it wasn't Brynjolf holding it, nor Delvin, nor anyone she knew; there were two of them, and one drew a sword, the other a bow, and she stumbled against the wall on their right—had he pushed her?—and Vilkas pressed the flat of the hoodlum's blade against the wall on their left and punched him in the jaw. As that one fell, he drew his sword to engage the bowman.

The mugger on the ground failed to reach the sword he dropped, so he drew a dagger and pushed himself up, and Harjid picked up the sword from behind him to shove it through his back before he could fully stand.

With Vilkas to dispatch him, the bowman died quickly; the other had gurgled bloody slobber all down his front as he clawed at the dripping blade through his chest. He reached for Vilkas, who slit his throat, and the bandit fell a final time.

"The heart is here."

Harjid started, looking up from the blood to Vilkas, standing before her again. "What?"

Vilkas pointed to his own chest. "The heart. They die quicker if you puncture it."

"Oh."

He looked over his shoulder at the two of them, who were alive only a moment ago. "You were quick. Good job, missy."

She nodded, and he led her down the corridor and through the muggers' camp—where no one would sleep tonight—and once Vilkas bashed in the skull of a skeever and grumbled about that too-familiar smell, Harjid nearly let him lead her the long way around.

"No," was all she could get out, managing to point with trembling fingers to the locked doorway on the left.

"Your time to shine, aye?"

She was still nodding when she pulled her pack into her lap; the knot was loose on her rolled kit, at least, and the lock itself not terribly complex. The first two tumblers held, then her pick broke. Vilkas snorted.

The next pick didn't make it past the first tumbler, and the snap jarred her over the edge, and she put her head in her hand.

"Not quite shining, little miss?"

"Shut up! Just shut up, Vilkas!" She wiped tears off her cheeks, taking heaving, shuddering breaths.

Vilkas just furrowed his brow.

Drawing up her knees, Harjid hooded her eyes with her hand and let the tears leave her. She jumped at the sound of Vilkas' armor scraping against the stone floor; before he could put an arm around her, he caught himself, which made her snort. _I'll cleave off one of your meaty fingers._

Tucking hair behind her ear, she looked up at him; he was scowling, but in the way he did when he didn't understand a particular phrase of Ancient Nordic, not in the way he had when she'd come to join the Companions.

"You've never killed anyone."

She shook her head.

"Aye. You'll always remember your first."

Harjid sniffed. "Yours must have been a long time ago."

He stood, holding his hand out to her. "Come on. I'll break the damn lock if I have to." He half-smiled at her, and she took his hand.

The flexible lockpick did the trick. Vilkas drew his sword again, but the skooma addict who usually drank in front of the Ragged Flagon door wasn't there.

"Praise Mara indeed," Harjid said, not insincerely. She paused again before a door, turning back to him. "Don't, uh . . . try not to talk to anyone." He crossed his arms. "Right. Well then."

Inside, they turned left, passing a couple of dark alcoves on her way to the last, lit with lanterns and lined with bookshelves. She withdrew _Herbane's Bestiary: Werewolves_ and put it up on a shelf; the notes Vilkas had given her regarding _The First Five Hundred_ went into the chest, which she had to unlock.

"Harjid's back, Vekel."

Harjid smiled up at Tonilia, who was never more than cordial with her. "Has he been whining?"

Between Brynjolf and Rune at the bar, Vekel waved her over. "Harjid! What did those cutthroats in Whiterun give you for that axe fragment?"

Brynjolf laughed, Harjid tensed up, and Vilkas scoffed.

"Ask _him,_ mate," said Delvin from a table. "He's that swordsman from Jorrvaskr."

Vekel eyed him. "You brought a glorified city guard to _my_ pub?"

"Would you stop? I got a good deal for that."

"That so, lass? I could've found you a more generous buyer."

Vilkas snarled at Brynjolf. "Who'd you have in mind?"

Harjid stood between him and her Guildmaster. "A bodyguard was part of the prize!"

"What else you get for it?" Vex barked, the entire Flagon filling with laughter.

Vilkas rolled his eyes. "Would you make this quick? Hey, she needs to talk with you."

Brynjolf sobered quickly enough. "That so, lass?" When she nodded, he gestured to Delvin's table, where they followed him.

Vilkas, instead of taking the chair beside Harjid, stood at her back. "Shouldn't this be private?"

"No one here would think to—"

"Not yet. Things will change."

Harjid asked if they could have privacy with Brynjolf and Delvin; Vex was the first to ask if she was serious, and Vekel kept sweeping.

"Oi! The lot of you best leave for the Cistern," said Delvin to a roomful of muttering and eye-rolling.

Vilkas' hands were heavy on the back of her chair; sensing her discomfort, Brynjolf asked him to sit between him and Harjid, but Vilkas shook his head.

"Relax, lad," Delvin said. "Have a drink."

Brynjolf was done waiting. "Now, lass," he said, folding his hands on the table, "what've we to talk about?"

She almost came right out with it, but realized she had no way of proving it; suddenly, with the threat of their laughing at her looming over her, her stomach twisted. "It may come as a shock to you, but I'm the one the Greybeards summoned."

Brynjolf shared a look with Delvin, but leaned forward again all the same. "You aren't joking, but I'm not like to believe without some proof."

Harjid shrugged. "I don't have any."

"Yeah you do." Delvin tapped his throat. "He means that, ah—Shouting."

"Aye." Brynjolf slapped the table. "Like Ulfric Stormcloak. The Thu'um."

"No."

Harjid followed the Guildmaster's eyes up to Vilkas, whose hands wound around the back of her chair.

"I'll give orders to my own people, lad."

"Harjid you may," Vilkas offered, "but the Dragonborn belongs to the Companions."

Brynjolf sat back from the table, eyeing Harjid like a purse full of pebbles. "Will you not deny it, lass? We're your family."

His voice faltered at the last, and Harjid's eyes filled again with hot tears. "I haven't been able to do it but once."

"And she eviscerated the man who got in the way." Vilkas ground a fingertip into the tabletop. "The Greybeards can't use their Thu'um but once a day. And they train decades for the privilege."

Delvin crossed his arms. "You're that booky one I've heard tell about, ain't ya?"

"He is," Harjid sniffled, and Delvin pointed at her and lowered his voice, all seriousness.

"Remember I told you when you took this job—I said, 'Don't work with anyone outside who's smart.' What'd I say about it? Hm?"

"That it's the smart ones who betray you."

"Aye. And you're going up the Throat, where no one can help you but 'im—a mercenary." Delvin shook his head. "I thought you was smart, girl."

"Brave words for a sewer rat," Vilkas sneered.

"Don't you start wi' _me_ , boy."

Harjid put her hand on Vilkas' arm; a werewolf and a former assassin need not come to blows. "I trust Vilkas, and he's the best swordsman in all of Tamriel. But he's a scholar who knows more about the history of the Greybeards than even me. There is no one better suited to guide me to them."

Brynjolf put his elbows on the table. "But think about the library you've built here, lass. Do you really want to leave it? It's your passion, you've always said."

"Of course I don't! But I can't . . . I have to go." She felt even Vilkas' eyes on her. "I've spent my whole life collecting histories and songs—the stories of other people." She laughed as the tears came. "It's time I begin my own."

#

After Harjid and Vilkas slept a night in the Cistern, Brynjolf gave her a bottle of Argonian wine and a slap on the back, and Delvin made sure Vekel packed a basket full of meat pies, red apples, and waxed cheeses. Even Vilkas was gracious, though curt about it. He shook hands with Delvin when he said, "If she don't come back, you better be deader." It was something, anyway.

Harjid was thankful he was silent all the way to Treva's Watch, where they camped the next night, the most recent inhabitants having been flushed out by Riften guards, just as Vex had said. They dined on a pie each, but Vilkas wanted no apple after, claiming it would only settle wrong for him at this hour and he wanted to be well rested for another early departure. Vilkas had let the fire go out before falling asleep, which suited her not at all; she was still accustomed to the relative heat of the Rift in daytime, but he had whined the whole way down to Riften about the smell and the temperature. He stank the next morning, which she told him, so as she packed up, he took a dip in the river, walking back up the bank to where she stood with their horses looking somewhat wild in his loose undershirt.

"What?" he grumbled, shaking his hair with a bare hand.

She recovered quickly, though. "I've just never seen a man who looked more natural shaking himself dry."

"Lucky you didn't see more of me," he said, shattering her pride at having, she thought, covered her daze.

"I didn't see any of you." She couldn't keep herself from saying, when Vilkas' mouth lifted in that annoying half-grin of his, that now he smelled like a wet dog.

He snorted in reply, eyeing her up and down, which happened too often for it to still bother her so much. Giving her a leg up, he then mounted his own horse and kicked it into a gallop.

Before long, Vilkas had sweated through his shirt, and she could trace his shoulder blades as he rode, working in rhythm with the sound of the hooves on the cobblestones. Something Sapphire said rang in her ears, and she felt her face heat up, though the wind was cold.

" _He's quite handsome for an up-jumped thug."_

But she told her that he was no such thing, and that the Companions were quite traditional, if not always in a good way.

"Might be that it's about honor for some," Brynjolf had replied, watching Vilkas demonstrate a balanced overhead swing for Rune and the others. "But him? It's gold."

Sapphire had smiled. "Doesn't matter," she said. "Harjid didn't deny _everything_ I said."

And why should she? Handsome didn't mean anything. If Vilkas were the most handsome man in Skyrim—in Tamriel—it could never outshine his scowl, or his eyes rolling every time she made a good point, or his general disdain for everything she held dear, save maybe history.

Honeysuckle slowed before Chestnut did, and Harjid felt a mild panic when she couldn't think of how to call to Vilkas, but he happened to glance over his shoulder and turned to trot back.

"Are you feeling unwell?" she called.

"Would you enjoy that?"

Harjid scoffed. "You're just sweating so much, even without your ar—"

"Aye, as I was on our way down here. But we've seen what this road has to offer, and unless bandits have seized our bridge in the last two days, I'm well suited for the dangers the Rift has to off—hey!"

Just then, a wild-eyed Nord tumbled out of the bushes at the roadside, his wrists clamped in chains and feet bare; he ducked around Vilkas' startled horse and sprinted south down the road.

" _Shor's bones_."A pair of Imperial soldiers made Chestnut rear up when they burst through the shrubs to chase their prisoner.

Harjid trotted over to Vilkas, who was watching whatever was happening behind her.

"He's a Stormcloak," he said, brow furrowing.

The soldiers had caught him and led him back up the road. Vilkas held his arm out to halt her when she tried to trot Honeysuckle over to the river, and as the soldiers passed, he spat at their feet. The Stormcloak prisoner hid a smile, and the soldiers looked too green to allow their insult to show, lest it incite a fight.

Harjid felt sorry for them; they were hardly old enough to leave home, and the Stormcloak and Vilkas both towered over them. She supposed it was good they were intimidated, considering Vilkas' lack of armor.

She tutted and dismounted, taking Honeysuckle to the water.

"I suppose you want me to ask why you're angry."

"It never makes a difference if you know why," Harjid said, "because you never apologize, anyway."

Vilkas scoffed. "Did I hurt the feelings of the mighty—the _Imperial_ —Dragonborn?"

"Ha!" Harjid barked. "I just thought the Companions were above political alignments."

"We don't get involved," he said, "but we don't bury our heads in the snow."

"That's fine, Vilkas. But would you tell me why you had to spit at a pair of boys just doing their job?"

He was pulling his armor out of his pack. "Don't tell me you actually believe that story about the King! He accepted the duel."

"Because 'honor' dictated! He was hardly bigger than those boys you just insulted. Tell me, do you feel big and honorable after that? And you certainly didn't rescue your fellow Stormcloak—"

"Hey." Vilkas pointed up the road, where the soldiers had disappeared over a hill with their prisoner. "It isn't my place to fight their battles, and pouncing on two boys who couldn't hold a sword until a month ago was not going to happen. I'm surprised at you, Harjid."

She almost felt tears coming. "Why?"

"I thought you believed in a country's right to govern itself. You were inspired by the Nerevarine! Don't you believe in anything he's said?"

Harjid was crying now, and she felt absurdly childish for it. "I believe in _order_ ," she said shakily. "The rest of the Empire had no way of understanding their culture until we reached out to _them_."

"Reached out-? The Empire stamped out anyone who didn't welcome them with open arms," Vilkas seethed. "It wasn't until the Nerevarine helped the Dunmer drive out their oppressors that we even got hold of the oral histories-their _real_ histories."

She palmed her forehead, feeling a headache coming on. "How can you be so naive about this? Because the Imperials settled Vvardenfell to make peace with the Almsivi Triad-"

"The False Gods."

"Yes, but listen, this is just like your book-"

"Aye, it is!" Vilkas was getting louder the more armor he donned. "You wanted the real thing, not some Imperial's interpretation of Ysgramor. If the Empire had never breached our borders, Skyrim would still speak the ancient tongue, and sing the old songs, and worship freely, and we never would have bent the knee to a king like Torygg or signed that damn White-Gold paper." He was standing right in front of her, but he must've been annoyed because jerked her face up by the chin. "You aren't writing a book of songs, are you? You only wanted to collect another culture's sacred past."

Harjid dug her nails into his palm as she pulled his hand off of her. "I started writing a song," she choked, "but I couldn't think of anything to rhyme with 'boorish.'" She mounted her horse without his chivalrous little leg-up and started down the lane once more.

"Don't be a child!" Vilkas called, then, after catching up with her, "Only the winners write history. How can you support a people losing its identity? Like it or not, missy, where you're from means something."

She scoffed. "Only if you know where that is."

"What don't you know? You're the Dragonborn."

Biting back the urge to ask-plead-why, Harjid only grumbled, "It's ridiculous."

Vilkas fell silent for a time. "You'll show them the proper respect, I trust?"

"Excuse me?"

"The Greybeards."

"Ha! Maybe if they agree with my politics."

#

Ivarstead greeted them with rain hissing in the river and on the road. There was only one place to stay, and Vilkas told her to go inside; when she dismounted, he took the horses to the stable and rejoined her when she was just settling at a table inside.

"What did you do?" he mumbled, watching the bard whisper with the innkeep.

"I walked to this table."

"They know who you are."

Harjid wrinkled her nose. "Who'd you tell?"

The bard approached them, holding a letter. "Good evening and welcome to Vilemyr Inn, I am Lynly. Wilhelm has a letter for a blonde woman traveling with a dark-haired swordsman."

"She's hardly a woman," said Vilkas.

Harjid scoffed. "And he's hardly a swordsman."

Lynly seemed to compose herself before she spoke. "Are you Harjid or not?"

Vilkas took the letter, inspected the seal, and, finding it worthy, handed it to her without thanking the girl. "You have two rooms for rent?"

"Yes, sir. Ten drakes apiece."

"How's the cooking here?"

"Doesn't matter, really, does it?" Lynly said.

He laughed. "Ale for me, and-what do you want, missy?"

Harjid noticed the horse of Whiterun on the letter's seal. "Oh, anything."

"Another ale, sir?"

"She won't drink ale," said Vilkas. "Wine."

Once the bard went off to fetch their food, Harjid stood and lifted her pack. "Tell her to bring my food to my room."

"Tell me what that's about."

"Obviously."

Harjid closed her door and let her pack drop on the dresser, then untied her vest and was about to peel off her wet frock when her food came. She looked at the tray the girl had set on her bed, but her mind only buzzed. _Letter, undress, food, then bed_ , she decided. _I won't want to report the letter to Vilkas in my nightdress._

She broke the seal, pulling her hair down as she read, then stormed out of her room and found Vilkas still sat at their table.

"What in Oblivion do you want?"

"You reported me!" She waved the letter in his face. "I told you I didn't steal anything. That's forty Septims I don't have, Vilkas!"

He stood and tried to hush her, which only made her more furious.

"You still owe me for your horse, don't forget, and I know you have it, too, because you like gold more than any _thief-_ "

Vilkas lifted her over his shoulder, and after her initial squeal of surprise, she was quiet until he tossed her onto his bed and shut the door. "What are you screaming about?" he hissed, rounding on her.

Harjid held out the letter, and he had the nerve to snort at it.

"Don't be a child. I reported you when I found out about your little stunt with the book."

"So you admit it."

He started unhooking his cuirass. "Did you think I wouldn't?"

"Then you'll take care of this?"

"You broke the law," he scoffed, "not me."

Harjid stood and slapped him across the cheek. "I should've known. They were right that I shouldn't have trusted you. You hide behind your idea of honor, but you're a thief at heart—you love gold more than I do."

He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her up to his face. "Worrying about gold has kept me alive since before you were born," he seethed. "I didn't have a plump little father to feed me sweetrolls."

"Oh, yes," she barked, "my life has been nothing but honeyed milk!"

"If you think death is the worst that can happen," he nodded, "aye."

"What about that boy you let Uthgerd kill? Think he'd agree with you? Maybe if he'd lived long enough to set down his sword."

Vilkas shook her by the shoulders, clenching his teeth, his breath rattling.

"Are you going to hurt me?" Harjid couldn't help the laugh that escaped her. "I think you are. Go ahead, Companion. Show me how honorable you are."

His fingers tightened on her arms, but he released her. "You aren't worth the effort of raising my hand. But you'd have enjoyed that."

"What are you talking about?"

"I can smell the _excitement_ on you. Every time you pretend to be insulted, your heart skips a beat and the blood rushes-" His eyes darted down her body, and he wrinkled his nose. "Vile creature. You let your Dragon blood earn you a place among the esteemed company of Jorrvaskr. That such an honor is bestowed on someone who doesn't even comprehend the concept-"

"Hey, I never asked for this responsibility!"

"And I never asked for mine! But you can either try to be worthy of it or bemoan the difficulties of life itself. Death looking a little better to you yet?"

Harjid folded her arms. "So how will _you_ end, Vilkas?"

"Me? I never had a chance. What I am . . . but _you_ have a chance. Might inspire as many as Ysgramor, or Talos himself."

"No." Harjid shook her head. "It's easy for someone like you to be honorable. For a Talos or an Ysgramor. But the rest of us have to make do, and get things done whatever way we can. Honor is a luxury for warriors. Not for people like me."

"That's an excuse, missy." He lifted her chin. "It isn't easy for anyone to be honorable."

Harjid's breath escaped her; Vilkas drew closer to her, and she crossed her arms. "You all just fix the game against us, and the only way we win is if we break the rules that keep you in power."

"You're just afraid you can't do it. Maybe you can't. But don't let anyone else see that but you, or they'll prove you right."

Her heart was thrumming. "You know what? Why don't you go up there? Tell them you're me—you're used to being the big hero, aren't you? Take the accolades for being chosen by a deified brute and your beloved monks. You rescue these people. I don't owe them anything."

Despite everything she'd said before in her attempts to hurt him, this one thing that she'd said in all earnestness seemed like it finally struck him. And it wasn't even about him.

"Get out," he whispered, lifting a bottle of mead to his lips.

Harjid threw open the door, her face hot, and went to her own room. She undressed and crawled into bed, but sleep surely would not come for a while. The refrain from Lynly's song passing through the cracks in her door didn't help:

 _Our hero, our hero_

 _Claims a warrior's heart_

 _I tell you, I tell you_

 _The Dragonborn comes . . . ._

#

The mountain.

Vilkas had sent the barmaid in to wake Harjid an hour before sunrise, and in the darkness, the Throat could have been simply a road; once the sun softened the indigos and violets into greys and greens, however, and they could see how much farther they had to climb, the mountain was too much. Harjid's thighs had been humming with her pulse for hours now. Vilkas had said nothing to her since she'd left him to drink alone in his room.

But he wasn't alone.

Harjid lifted her eyes to his back; he held a bow in his sword hand, at the ready for the wolves Klimmek assured them they'd find. How Vilkas could function on so little sleep . . . .

Harjid had awoken thrice in the night to the sound of rutting; Lynly was not a little smug when she'd hoarsely told her that Vilkas awaited her outside.

 _I don't care what he does,_ Harjid told herself. _But when he keeps me awake the night before such a trial as this—_

The road wound away from the sun again, and the shadow of the Throat, when she looked behind her, stretched over tundra for leagues. She paused, approximating the peak of the shadow at the horizon, and judging the time and speed required to travel the length—

"Keep up, little miss."

Harjid turned back to the rocky path, descending a set of ancient steps, only to have twice as many to ascend a moment later. "I seem to have barely slept, Shield-Brother."

She didn't know whether she imagined it, or if he truly hated when she called him that.

"Not talking, Vilkas? Just as well, because I was hoping we could pass this time in bitter silence."

"You should save that pretty little voice of yours for someone who wants to hear it."

Clouds gathered over the sun, paling all the world from gold to silver.

"It was kind of you to keep everyone awake with the loudest woman in the Rift," Harjid drawled.

" _You_ are the loudest woman in the Rift."

"Pay me as much as you paid her, and I'll prove you right."

Vilkas threw down his bow and rounded on her; it was the first she'd actually seen his face since the night before. "I don't—not that it's your business, but I don't _have_ to pay for . . . company."

"Well done!" Harjid forced a laugh. "You seduced a woman who sings to the same six people every night. Truly remarkable. I would write you a song, but I'm sure she will."

"Please!"

Harjid started; Vilkas rubbed his forehead, then pointed at the mountain, its peak shrouded in darkening wisps of cloud.

"Tonight is the full moon. If you'd read your damn book, you'd know how it affects people like—how it affects me. I will rise to your challenge, woman. Every other time, I will rise to it. But today, please. Keep your vitriol to yourself."

Harjid swallowed, trying to even out her breathing before he could sense the tightening of her throat.

"We may not be friends," he continued, proving she failed to hide her discomfort, "but I don't want to lose control and hurt you."

 _He needed that woman._ Harjid nodded the smallest nod, and he turned away from her.

"I will guide you all the way," he threw over his shoulder, and drew his sword.

The day wore on, dragging as heavily as their feet, throwing the wind, rain, and finally sleet into their faces; darkness never quite descended, but rather mixed with the day to lengthen their suffering until Vilkas spotted shelter beyond a path between two walls of ice gleaming with moonlight.

"I'm so exhausted. Thank the Divines."

But Vilkas held out his arm. "There's something in there."

Harjid followed his glowing eyes to the cave; the moon lit everything beneath the rock ledge. "It's empty, Vilkas. Let's get in there and go to sleep."

"I can smell the goats rotting."

She whimpered. "I just want to rest, Vilkas. Please."

He had her cover him with her bow, though if he'd run into trouble, the wind would've made her efforts futile; but he returned to her to say the cave was empty, and he offered his arm, then to carry her. It took as much effort to refuse the offer than to wade through the mounting snow to their campsite. She watched Vilkas build a fire, but it wasn't much more than a spark before she fell asleep.

A roar woke her.

The fire was out, the moon showing fully, Vilkas was nowhere to be found, and she stood, the roar louder.

Moonlight gleamed along a blade over on Vilkas' mat beside his armor. Harjid's breath came in short, shaking moans. The muscles in her legs and buttocks were tight as she crouched to pick up his sword, which was too heavy even if her arms hadn't been shaking with exhaustion and terror. She dropped it, the clanking echoing from the cave and down the path between the walls of ice. Her hands covered her mouth, but she'd already made too much noise.

Behind her came the drawing of a snarling breath, and as she turned, something pushed her to the ground and clashed with the other creature, one growl challenging the other. Harjid gasped at the battle before her—a frost troll held up the neck of the biggest wolf she'd ever seen as it snapped down toward it with its massive teeth. The wolf's growl died in its throat, and with its other arm, the troll knocked it away, the wolf whimpering like a pup as it slid toward her, blue eyes dimming.

Harjid scuttled backward into the dead fire; she threw a handful of cold ashes into the troll's eyes, only delaying it a moment while she drew a dagger from her pack—a bow was too much for her body now. Her short reach could never match that of the beast, even if it couldn't see her coming; approaching it was suicide. Harjid held the dagger by the blade and flung it with as much as she had, though it only stuck the troll in the underarm.

It roared again, a terrible screech that shook her very bones and made her hands cover her ears, weak as her arms were. The troll drew the blade out and let it drop in the snow, banged its fists on the ground, and made for her again.

Vilkas—nude and wild-eyed—was on him then, but the troll only rolled forward, slamming him into the frozen logs from the fire. Harjid screamed, and the troll remembered her, and crawled over Vilkas and ran on all fours at her. She tried to use her Shout, but the beast swung and cracked her in the rib, and she coughed and couldn't inhale enough to try again before it knocked her into the cave wall, and just before it lifted its claws to disembowel her, its throat split open and threw hot blood all over her face.

Vilkas let the troll fall to the side, and once his eyes met hers, he fell, too.

Harjid screamed his name until her voice just made hissing noises. Her pulse rang in her ears, and Vilkas was not awaking. She pulled him up into a sitting position and patted his cheek.

"You have to stand up, Vilkas, so we can go on—Vilkas, wake up, please!" Her pathetic little hisses shouldn't have done it, but he opened his eyes, and she began to cry and tried to get his armor from his bedroll, but he said no, and a shadow as big as the Throat passed over them and blew a plume of fire into the sky.

"We have to go." He pushed himself off the ground and they stumbled through the snow down stairs and up more and around ledges only as wide as Harjid's arm was long; Vilkas splattered droplets of blood with every step he made, and at the top of steps they had to descend, he finally lost consciousness and tumbled down them, Harjid very nearly going with him in her hurry to assure herself he was alive.

He was cold, dying. His eyes fluttered open and his rattling breath hit her neck. "Leave me."

"Vilkas."

But he was unconscious again. Harjid tried to lift him, but her strength was nothing to his. The dragon roared overhead, and Harjid's lungs burned.

Through a blast of fire in the sky, a spire shone in the clouds—Hrothgar. She had to Shout again, and if she only managed to lure the dragon to them, well . . .

They were dead anyway.

#

 _I'm so sorry it took as long as it did, but I tried to make it worth it—behold, 8,000 words! To the poor soul who was hoping for an update before death by suspense, RIP._

 _I worry that I make Farkas out to be dumb, but that is not my aim. He speaks simply, and always earnestly, and I love him for it. Just…not as much as I love his brother for his scowls and muttering. #swoon_

 _I do not own Skyrim, nor the lyrics from its song about the Dragonborn._

 _The next chapter will be from Vilkas' point of view in Sovngarde._


	5. Chapter 5

_I should've read Tilma her romances,_ he thought, images rising in his mind of Jorrvaskr, his brother, his mother, and sinking again. _It's too late, now._

Vilkas thought he must be dead, though when he saw Jergen's face, it was just as he remembered it, with no scar from the axe that had split it; and his mother . . . had she really been so young? _Much too young,_ he decided. _Certainly younger than me._

He considered this a moment—or perhaps he considered it for an eternity—but he thought she must have died at twenty-five. _Farkas and I are twenty-eight. I am twenty-eight._ Did he feel the corners of his mouth twitch? _Farkas is older than me, now. As I'm older than Ma._

 _Much older than that boy you killed_ , said Harjid from his memories. _No, woman, I didn't kill him. But he died a Companion, which is more than_ you _deserve._

But perhaps she'd died too; Vilkas licked his lips. _It's her fault. I told her to leave me._ He remembered the snow, and his state of undress after indulging the beast blood. _It's fine, missy, I'm not even cold . . . ._

His eyes opened, but the sconces were too bright, and he closed them. Vilkas tried again, squinting through the light, which wasn't so bright after all; someone sat next to him, but it was only a dark shape. A book snapped shut. _Harjid._

" . . . told . . . leave." Vilkas felt his mouth tighten, and he tried again before she could tease him about it. "I told you to leave me."

She said nothing. He furrowed his brow and tried to tilt his head, but his neck was so stiff and his body so weak, he managed only to turn his face enough to see the flame fully, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

Vilkas took a breath before he moved his face back and panted. _Why isn't she saying anything? I'm clearly awake._ He clenched his jaw and tried again to open his eyes. "Here," he grunted, doing his best to nod in front of him. "Let me see how bad you were hurt." Silence. Stillness. Vilkas couldn't slam his fist into anything—all he managed was a weak clutching of the blanket, but it was enough.

Wooden chair legs scraped against the stone floor, but the figure that came into view hardly need have; he was wrapped in a hooded robe that shadowed his face in front of the sconce, but Vilkas could make out a beard hanging all down his front.

Had they made it? _By the Divines. But how?_

Vilkas focused his shallow breaths to speak as clearly as he could. "Harjid?"

The monk bowed his head and scuffled out of the room.

He was gone too long.

Vilkas lifted a heavy arm that would not bend; he had to blink against what he saw a few times, for it was bandaged oddly, as if by someone who'd never seen a broken arm before. _Harjid._

He tried to make a fist with his right hand, which only made his arm ache, but he continued until his fingers balled up and splayed out as they normally could. The pain proved he was on the mend; he looked round for something to squeeze as exercise, but the room was, in a sense, bare.

There was a stone table at the foot of his bed, with a great many chairs encircling it and a fire pit in the middle; banners hung from the ceiling, tattered and faded; there was a small table beside him, holding only a pitcher and bowl and book, and beyond, the sconce so determined to blind him.

Vilkas pulled the blankets off him and swung his legs toward the door, and as he stood, he stumbled into the chair the monk had left; he tried to catch himself with his favored arm and swore, then sat a while to catch his breath. He wore scratchy rags, but he preferred that over nudity.

 _What in Oblivion was I thinking?_ But he knew; the smell was still in his nostrils—the sweat and arousal and heartbeat that raced his own. Perhaps taking the barmaid was a mistake; that's when it had all become too much for him.

The doorway passed over him as slowly as a cow birthing a calf. Vilkas looked to the right, thinking that might be a way to go, but the left had a bigger chamber that way. His palm guided him down the corridor against the stone wall, and he heard—tapping?—coming from somewhere. His head still swam, jarring his senses. He made his way to the large chamber, but it was empty. _Just as well. I'm in no shape for more stairs._

On his right side was a door; the sunlight was bright in the windows, but frost still clouded them, and he assumed it was still morning. _On the mountain, though, that frost could stick around past midday._

He had to push himself from the inner wall to the outer, then rest. The tapping was definitely coming from outside; Vilkas drew a sharp breath: he could smell her. Blood hurtled through his veins, and he suddenly felt much more exhausted, just as he'd been slowing his heartbeat.

Her heart was drumming, too; she was sweaty again, or still; did he imagine her arousal? _Yes._ It was only exertion, none of the cerebral toying that made her blood rush to her loins.

In an attempt to center himself, Vilkas shut his eyes, but behind them, he could see the barmaid on all fours, her yellow hair in his fist. He swore again, and reached over with his left hand to open the door; the cold surrounded him quickly enough, but the tapping was louder, and now he could hear her little grunts of exertion.

"This woman is going to kill me."

The monk who'd been attending him came from the farther corridor, holding a tray with broth, grapes, and a sliver of bread that looked exhaustingly chewy.

Vilkas nodded over his shoulder toward the open door. "Can you tell me what's going on out there?"

The monk's eyes darted down and back up, and he looked as if he might laugh.

"I need out there!" Vilkas growled, his blood screaming through his veins. _The wolf claws out of me even at Hrothgar._

The monk set down the tray and held out his arm for Vilkas to grab, and, barefoot, he went out into the courtyard. Amongst the remaining Greybeards, Harjid, red-cheeked and concentrating, swung a rod made of bound reeds at a monk who dodged her blow with more agility than could a man half his age. Harjid's frustration came out in a sound that made Vilkas swallow hard, and she turned to stab the monk with the blunted tip of her weapon. He dodged again, and Harjid followed his movements, but halted when her eyes landed on Vilkas. The monk slid his sword between her ankles and flicked her leg out from under her, and before he could stop himself, Vilkas was throwing a stream of curses at him for it.

Harjid pushed herself back up, ignoring the defeat, and ran toward him, sliding to a halt on the snow-speckled bricks as if she'd been doing so all her life. She smiled up at him through her panting. "How are you feeling?"

Her breath smelled of apples, and her shirt—she wore no jerkin—had fallen a little to her shoulder. The linen was loose around her body, but the hard little peaks on her breasts stuck out, and in the sunlight, Vilkas could just trace the darkness of her nipples through the fabric.

"Are you . . . feeling well?" she tried again.

Vilkas swallowed and held up his broken arm.

"Ah, yes . . ." A tiny laugh tumbled out of her mouth. "That's how the Bosmer do it. I read about it once and thought I'd—"

"I don't appreciate being your experiment."

Harjid lifted the hair that fell from the wilting bun on her crown to scratch her neck. "You should've said so."

He couldn't help his smile.

"Get back inside," she said, turning back to her trainer. "You were out a week with a cold."

Vilkas released his breath. "I've been out a week?" he called after her as she took her fighting stance.

"Two."

#

Lunch proved tiring. The monk would not speak to him, which was probably for the best, for Vilkas found death by evisceration a somewhat unpleasant prospect.

"Can you nod, then? Shake your head?"

The monk beamed at him.

Vilkas rolled his eyes. "Do you know what happened the night we arrived here?"

 _No._

Vilkas nodded, which made the monk shake his head harder, and in a better mood, Vilkas might have laughed. It only made him seethe: "Did she have any injuries?"

The monk thought a moment. _Yes._

"And were those injuries . . . severe?"

 _No._

He breathed deeply then; he felt that he finally could. He must not have attacked her that night, though all he remembered was becoming the beast, then, when he was a man again, nude and freezing in her arms, telling her to leave him and save herself.

"She's a stubborn one."

 _Yes._

Vilkas tapped the tray as he chewed. "What do you do for fun up here?"

The monk pressed his palms together and closed his eyes.

"Aye, I thought as much. And training?"

 _Yes._

"You all just stand around and hit each other with dried up sugar cane?"

A grin.

"Aye. So do we, in a manner of speaking." Vilkas lifted his bowl, good arm shaking, but he downed the rest of it before he put it down. "Did you ever get your supplies?"

 _No._

He sighed. "I did have the bag with me, but . . . might be it's lower on the mountain. I'll get it today."

 _No._

"Tomorrow, then. When I'm stronger..?"

 _Yes._

"Aye. Sorry about that. What else do you do up here, besides teaching each other the language of the dragons?"

The monk handed him the book he'd been reading when Vilkas awoke: The Book of the Dragonborn.

"Ah. I'm sure I've read this one."

The monk pressed his palms together again and smiled, nodding at it.

"You sure?"

 _Yes._

"You're probably faster than I am. I take notes."

The monk smiled and pointed to his temple.

"Right, you must have this memorized by now."

 _Yes._ Then he nodded to Vilkas' broken arm.

"I can't write with the good one, either."

He smiled and left, returning with a few rolls of parchment and a quill with ink. Then he nodded at the book again.

Vilkas shook his head. "There's no need. I'm sure she will be happy to."

 _No._ He mimicked swinging a sword—horribly—and then opened his mouth and mimicked drawing something out.

"She'll be learning. Won't have time?"

The monk pressed his lips together.

Vilkas felt his heart skip a beat, then couldn't suppress a grin. "You don't know her yet."

The monk's bottom lip pushed upward, and he tilted his head to the side. _I'll admit as much._

"She's . . . you'll see, but . . ." Vilkas ran his tongue over his front teeth, a grin playing stupidly on his face. The monk was watching him, smiling himself, and Vilkas barked at him to get some more candles.

#

Reading took . . . longer than anticipated.

Every mention of the Dragonborn's innate ability for body temperature control, her thirst for violence, and her talent for Shouting made Vilkas' eyes glaze over and his mind buzz with thoughts of Harjid's heat, her cheeks rosy with exertion, and those little noises she made when she got struck. He'd feel a flush crawl up his neck, then curse himself for his thoughts.

Often the Monk—whose name, Vilkas found once he'd written it, was Wulfgar ("What else would it be," Vilkas grumbled)—would stretch and yawn, snapping him back to the present.

By the time he finished, Vilkas couldn't keep his eyes open. Wulfgar took the book from Vilkas' lap and pinched out the flames from the extra candles.

 _It's still too bright in here,_ thought Vilkas, suddenly remembering the autumn sun shining through Harjid's shirt.

"Arngeir said they'd fed you," she said.

"Cover yourself," Vilkas mumbled, her scent filling him.

"What?"

Vilkas opened his eyes to Harjid before him, wrapped in a roughspun robe and holding a bucket.

"You _did_ eat, right?"

He closed his eyes again, grunting in the affirmative and tilting his body away from her. _A wolf has no business among monks and martyrs._

"Good." The bucket sloshed as she set it amongst Vilkas' candles, wafting the scent of lavender and mountain flower at him.

He pushed himself up, lifting a knee to rest his elbow on. "What in Oblivion are you doing?"

Harjid wrung out a rag and hiked up the robe over her knee, sitting on his bed behind him. "You smell like a tomb—ugh, a flooded tomb."

Vilkas pulled his shirt over his front, the sleeve catching on the rods that kept his broken arm straight. "You _have_ to cut this off."

He heard a titter as the cold rag brushed his shoulders and made him jump. "But you hate my dagger. Look up."

"Mm." He almost smiled as Harjid caressed his throat with it. "How went your training?"

"I'm bruised all over."

 _Nowhere I can see._ "You don't sound upset about it."

"Should I be? Arms up. Arms, I said."

He'd turned his head to the side, scowling at the bedside table. "That isn't the right way to train someone."

"Oh?" She sat on her knees to better reach over to his front. "How would you train me?"

Vilkas shook his head. "They didn't go over any swings with you. No form at all. You were swinging the same way you did in that cave of skeevers."

"Arngeir said it's better to conquer fear than avoid it. He thinks it's best for strengthening my nerves if I'm just thrown into the fray."

"Aye, that's how you get into bad habits that leave your face open. Why do monks need to know how to fight, anyway?"

"Keeps them busy, I guess. Exercise."

"They're teaching you poorly. It's lazy."

She pressed her lips to his ear to whisper, "What'll you do about it?"

He pulled away.

"You know the solution, Vilkas."

He held up his splinted arm.

"Don't be a baby. Hm. I suppose I'll have to shave you soon."

He felt his whiskers. "Don't think they know how to do it?" He yanked the rag from her to cool his face, then wiped under his right arm himself and gave it back to her again. _How long has she found it bearable to touch me?_

She laughed again. "I have to get your front, now." Harjid stood, and as she adjusted her robe, he caught her wrist.

"Tell me what happened that night."

Her pulse quickened under his fingers. "I will, but tonight I'm tired."

"That means you did something stupid." _Or I did._

Harjid pulled her wrist away from him. "Just wanted to do what you would have done."

"I told you to leave me."

She threw the rag at him, and it squashed his nose. "I am not your whelp! Does it matter how it was done if we're both safe now?"

"Of course it matters!"

His shouting made her flinch, but she started laughing at him. "I can't believe you're angry with me for saving you."

"What if you'd died?"

"Well, _you_ _would have._ Do you remember that—" She lowered to a whisper. "—you gave in to the beast blood and wandered back to camp completely nude and freezing to death?"

"And you broke my arm for it?"

Harjid crossed her arms. "You attacked a frost troll."

He didn't remember that; but he never remembered his time as a wolf . . . not waking, anyway. "Why did you even get close to me when I was not myself? I went as far as I could before letting the beast bl—"

"I _didn't_! You came back! The troll . . . you saved me." She wiped angry tears off her pink cheeks. "I couldn't let you die."

Vilkas's skin tingled. "How?"

She was working her mouth to hide her uneven breathing. "I tried to Shout up at the monastery. I think that's what made them come. But the dragon, thank the Divines . . . You don't remember any of this?"

"I don't. I remember soup. And you, here." He pointed to the chair; he'd remembered taking spoonfuls from her as soon as he'd tasted it with his waking mind.

Harjid nodded. "These past two weeks, they wouldn't feed you. Not when they realized you weren't . . ." She swore, blinking tears away and half-grinning.

"What?"

She sat on the chair, leaning forward to whisper again. "When they found us in the snow, they carried you inside. They thought _you_ were the Dragonborn."

Vilkas inhaled sharply. "They didn't help you?"

"They carried me in, but they were fussing over you, wrapping your arm and stitching the scratches. They kept calling you the Dovahkiin. I couldn't correct them."

Fury awakened in every corner of his body. He ground his teeth, mouth tight. _They thought she was the scribe because I am the warrior. And they were waiting for her to die._

"Vilkas."

He barely heard her over his rushing blood.

"Hey." She sat before him, her hands on his cheeks, her face filling his blurred vision. "Calm down, Vilkas. Conquer it." She panicked, wetting her cloth again and pressing it to his brow.

Vilkas jerked as a drop of perfumed water rolled to his navel.

"There, that's right. Come back to me."

He was heaving; he let her clean his brow, his cheeks, his ears, but it only made him burn; Vilkas closed his eyes, going back to Windhelm and the past, where his mother bathed him in a warped pot full of melted snow. He released a breath he didn't remember taking.

"You're somewhat pretty when you aren't pelted with road dust, Shield-Brother."

Vilkas snorted. "And you're pretty when you're quiet."

Her smile faltered, her chin atremble. "I was scared you were going to die while they had me training." She began to cry again, which only stirred Vilkas' anxiety.

"Don't," he grunted stupidly, which at least elicited a bitter laugh from her.

She looked up at him, tears on her eyelashes. And when she looked like that, she was pretty. Then she had to speak and ruin everything: "I think I'll go to bed, now."

Vilkas looked over his shoulder and around the room, but there were no other beds. "What, with _them_? They tried to kill you!"

Harjid laughed, and her hand was on his cheek, palm warm, fingertips like ice. "I've been sleeping in their chamber for two weeks. If they wanted to kill me, they would have done so while my fierce protector was unconscious."

He pulled her hand away and placed it in her lap, clenching his jaw. "I'm not worried about them _killing_ you. We can't _trust_ them. You're the only woman they've seen in . . . decades."

"But hardly pretty enough to trifle with?" she smirked.

"Stop it. You should sleep here. I'll take the floor."

She stood, but leaned down to whisper against his ear again: "Am I any safer with you?"

He shuddered, which made him too angry to sleep once she'd stalked away, her scent taunting him.

#

The Greybeards imposed their first training exercise on her at midnight on Sundas, the Trial of Silence; Arngeir said that this would allow the Thu'um to truly blossom, but Vilkas said, "Horse shit," and they had to start again, because Harjid laughed until she snorted.

All the respect he held for the monks evaporated the instant he heard of their intentions to let her die. Harjid argued that they'd carried her in alongside him, but he'd told her that's what bandits do when they want to loot corpses. That had shut her up until the Trial of Silence came around; Vilkas thought he'd enjoy her not talking, but now, Harjid could only catch his attention by squeezing his arm or tugging on his tunic. It was driving him mad.

"This Trial," he said to a room of silence, and Harjid popped her head out of _Songs of the Return, Vol. 2_ , "it lasts _ten_ _days_?"

She nodded, a smirk forming.

"Don't flatter yourself, missy. I'm tired of talking to the old man," he said of Arngeir. "And the less you talk, the more I do."

She stuck out her tongue.

He ladled tomato soup into a bowl and carried it over to her, one-handed. Only a couple of days prior, Vilkas had Harjid sling his arm properly, eliciting from him a groan comparable to that of a dragon when he finally bent his arm again. She'd giggled like a child at that, too.

Harjid pressed her palms together and dipped her head in thanks when he set the bowl before her.

"Don't do that," he grumbled. "You're no Greybeard."

Harjid pursed her lips.

"Oh, a spoon, aye." He returned to her table with two spoons in his own bowl, and plopped one into hers. Some of the soup splattered onto the cover of her book, which made her gasp; though she didn't use her voice, Vilkas still heard _her_ through the sharp little breath, and he spooned some soup into his mouth to hide his smile.

"Cover doesn't mean anything, missy. No, it doesn't. You're enjoying it, though. I can tell." He laughed at her harried flipping to a page about Ysgramor. "Aye, the best part of the book. Did it give you some perspective on him?"

She closed her eyes and laid a hand over her chest, then smiled at him again.

"Maybe one day you'll come to appreciate the people behind the tales, too."

Her fingernails tapped the emblem on the book cover.

"Well, he's an easy one to admire. Your Nerevarine may disagree."

Harjid raised a brow, then understanding washed over her face and she stood a finger behind each ear.

"Ysmir's beard, woman. Is that your impression of a Dark Elf?"

She bit her lip, which became a grin.

Vilkas shook his head. "No Dunmer I know would appreciate that." _Malthyr. Aval. Ambarys._

She mouthed "Athis?" then shrugged.

Vilkas laughed. "Don't like him? He's pompous, aye. But it can't be easy for a Dark Elf in the Companions."

She turned to the first page of text and pointed to the name Yngol.

"What about him?"

One of her delicate fingers came to rest on his right hand, and when he raised an eyebrow, she traced the line on the page before tapping him again: _Yngol, the Elder, was the brave strategist, bringing his learnings to bear on the battlefield that his enemies would be defeated before they even knew the battle had begun._

"You want me to die an early death like _him_ , I suppose?" _With a fitting burial at Windhelm._

Harjid huffed with a look of impatience at him, which just made him laugh.

"And that would make Farkas Ylgar, then?"

She nodded, grinning prettily, letting him read the next lines: _Ylgar, the Younger, was possessed of an unwavering spirit that drove his singular prowess to overwhelming feats in war. Together, the mind and the arm, they were capable of sowing a destruction most thorough and glorious to any who stood before them._

Vilkas couldn't help but smile. "Then Ysgramor would be who? Kodlak?"

She clapped in affirmation.

"We should find one for everyone in the Circle. I always pictured Rhorlak with Skjor's features, when I read the Songs as a boy."

She tilted her head, furrowing her brow.

"Ah, that's in fifty-six, that's why. He saw the most battles in all the Circle, but when news came of Ysgramor's passing, he fell down and wept."

Vilkas saw the skin of her arms rise in chills.

"Aye," he replied to her reaction, "and Skjor follows Kodlak as loyally. Once I had a dream that," he licked his lips and swallowed, "I dreamed that Skjor turned into a wolf when Kodlak died, and never gave up the beast blood again."

He heard her breathing, and he realized he must've been too intimate and forced a laugh. "I think what scared me so much about it was that it's probably going to happen that way."

Harjid was watching him, her heartbeat heavy.

"Us in the Circle, we . . . it's like your Guild. There's a sense of family to it, I guess. Or there's supposed to be."

Harjid's mouth formed a little O, and her eyes glazed over as she considered it.

"I didn't feel any different after I joined, except that I couldn't control myself the way I could before." He shook his head. "I thought if I pledged myself and drank the . . . I thought it would all feel like it was supposed to. Like what Jergen promised, all those years ago."

She was watching him like a deer before it was shot.

"He wasn't . . . Farkas thinks he was our father, but . . . if he was, we never called him that. And my mother never spoke of him."

Harjid opened her mouth to draw a shuddering breath, her face wet with quiet tears.

Pushing his bowl of soup away, Vilkas stood, pressed a kiss above Harjid's ear, and went off to bed.

#

Before the Trial of Silence ended, Klimmek arrived with a fresh supply of food and a letter from Farkas.

Vilkas asked Klimmek to wait, then read it eagerly, surprised to find it as wordy as it was:

 _Brother,_

 _Kodlak thinks you're fine, but I know you would've written something by now. Please respond as soon as you get this so I know you're alive. I'll pay you back for the courier if I have to._

 _The Silver Hand is getting—_ (Here, he'd scratched out "out of hand")— _to be a real nuisance. Kodlak wants us to be cautious, but Skjor and Aela are out for blood. All this conflict here is making it harder to keep my wolf quiet, but I know that you'd never let it get the best of you, so I won't let it get the best of me. I just wish I knew what you would do if you were here._

 _The only good thing going on is Ria. She's real nice and funny, and since you left, she keeps me company. Is it wrong if I want to kiss her? Aela says no but Skjor says yes, and I don't want to ask Kodlak if you think I shouldn't. Did you kiss Harjid yet?_

 _Farkas_

"Damn it, Farkas."

Harjid turned to look at him, her eyebrows raised.

"Don't worry about it, missy," Vilkas said, folding the letter. "You keep reading those notes."

She pressed her lips together and nodded, but he felt her eyes on him as he left the room. Wulfgar was meditating, and so Vilkas went back to Klimmek and Harjid, who quickly looked back down at the notes he'd made her on Alduin.

"Can you do me a favor, little miss?"

She pulled a new leaf of paper from her stack and smiled up at him, quill ready.

"Just tell Farkas that I am enjoying your Trial of Silence immensely and that a full progress report will come in the following weeks. And tell him not to write about . . . that damn animal of his."

Harjid's script was cramped, but not as sloppy as his. He watched her write that he'd broken his arm defending her, and his lips twitched, so he rubbed his face. She melted wax over it and let Vilkas press his ring to seal it. "Thank you, little miss," he said, turning back to Klimmek.

"That all?" said the old man.

"Aye." Vilkas handed him twelve Septims. "Five's for you and seven's for the courier to make that his first priority."

Klimmek was a little uncomfortable taking so much, but Vilkas insisted, pointing out that he didn't have much time to get back to Ivarstead before dark if he meant to argue.

"You're a good lad, Vilkas."

They shook hands, and Klimmek left, throwing Harjid a small wave on his way out.

Vilkas put his good hand on the back of her chair and leaned over her papers. "I have to start writing my report about your Trial soon."

She feigned horror.

"Aye, you're right to be scared. You didn't follow orders and you broke my arm."

She waved it off, which made him chuckle.

"You were right about Farkas and Ria."

A laugh almost escaped her.

"Shh. It's hardly thrilling. Especially when you're used to being right."

She nodded.

He sighed. "What am I going to do with you?"

At that, she grinned, her tongue between her teeth. He smiled, too.

#

 _To Kodlak Whitemane, Harbinger of the Companions of Ysgramor on Turdas, this Tenth Day of Sun's Dusk in Year 201 of Era the Fourth:_

 _On the Seventeenth of Hearthfire, I and the Dragonborn left Jorrvaskr for High Hrothgar, the Greybeards having summoned her; we arrived on the Twenty-Fifth of Hearthfire, though I was abed for two weeks, having sustained heavy injuries from our journey._

 _The Dragonborn completed the Trial set her by Harbinger Whitemane only today, having climbed the Seven Thousand Steps during the month of Hearthfire only up to the entrance of the monastery itself; I carried her down the steps of the monastery that she may walk up them herself and complete her Trial. I am thrilled to report that the Dragonborn was successful in this endeavor._

 _These past weeks, the Greybeards have trained her through challenges unlike any I have ever heard of. Her first, The Trial of Silence, I will relate below:_

 _Arngeir, who is the chief amongst the Greybeards (though not their supreme member), is the only monk among them who is able to speak with enough control to converse with us. He required the Dragonborn to refrain from using her voice for ten days, from midnight on Sundas, 16 Frost Fall._

 _This trial seemed impossible for the Dragonborn, who enjoys singing and tends to be argumentative. Though her face and gestures were fully expressive, she succeeded in staying silent for ten days, despite my efforts to tempt her._

 _I began with subtle things at first, remarking on a book and calling it by an incorrect title; I would see her bristle, but center herself and let it pass. Then I would try more outrageous things, such as slamming an empty tankard against the stone wall behind her as she read; this earned me many a bruise, but no victory. The final, and most effective, idea I had to goad her was to reveal weaknesses of my character._

 _Yet she surprised me again. She would draw up her knees and rest her chin on her folded arms; while recounting tragedies of my past, she would hide the effect my retelling had on her, and once even threw her arms around me to silently sob, stroking the back of my neck in an almost motherly way. With this, I determined she was too kind to tempt, and so I left her alone._

 _The Trial of Stillness proved more difficult for her; for me, it was the worst. I awoke on Sundas 30 Frost Fall to a minor earthquake. The Greybeards were chanting their morning prayers, and the rested Thu'um of the Dragonborn was more powerful than anyone anticipated; her usually high, clear voice came from lower in her throat, akin to the rumble of a bear. Dust fell from the ceiling in streaks, and she paused and looked about for Arngeir, who told her to continue even if the entire monastery collapsed. Then she looked at me, and she strode outside._

" _You must be still!" Arngeir insisted. "You must be willing to crush even him!"_

 _The Dragonborn sat in the middle of the yard, the day bright and balmy, and resumed her prayers. I looked up at the peak of the Throat of the World, but even that was safe from avalanche today; any snow still packed in the stone crevices was too wet and stiff to tremble at the chanting of the Dragonborn._

" _You will be punished for your insolence, Dragonborn!"_

 _But she was still. I had to suppress my pride. Arngeir locked the doors, but every time I passed a window that day (which I admit was more often than usual), she was stoic, sitting cross-legged and focused. After an engrossing study of the Dragonborn's notes on Dovahzul runes, I made a pot of vegetable stew for her, but I was distressed to find she was still outside. One of the Greybeards (Borri) went out and Spoke his Thu'um to the skies, which clouded and unleashed a torrent of freezing rain._

 _I swore at him and made to attack him, but he used a Shout to immobilize me. He pointed back at the Dragonborn, who was still unfazed: the snow around her would melt above her, and I remembered that her kind has the fire of dragons within; it takes a great deal of practice for someone like Borri to control this with his Voice, but the Dragonborn took to it quickly; I said many prayers of thanks that night, though I slept not at all._

 _The next morning, Einarth walked out and kicked over the bowl of stew I'd left for her, though it was untouched. He then, following Arngeir's orders, began cutting off the clothing from the Dragonborn's back until she was fully nude. Arngeir saw my outrage and suggested I step outside and touch her if I wanted to get through to her. Though I wanted nothing more than to strangle him, I realized_ that _might ruin the Dragonborn's concentration. I yanked my blanket from my bed and marched outside, my breath fogging in front of me._

" _Do not cover me," the Dragonborn said evenly._

 _I objected, saying that her breast was bare for each of us to look upon._

" _So look," she said._

 _At this moment I was torn. I wanted her to come inside and forget this nonsense, and return with me to Jorrvaskr, where no one would ever disrespect her thus; but I wanted her to stay, uncovered and undaunted, to beat these monks at their own game._

 _For every night thence, I set a bowl of soup out for her, for I believe starvation proves nothing about a person's strength of will. (If a person is starving, he has no need of will—he has no food to eat regardless.)_

 _In the last few hours of this Trial, Wulfgar followed me outside, and once I bent to exchange one full bowl for the other, he kicked me down, startling the eyes of the Dragonborn open. He brought with him a wine bottle which had been filled with water and frozen, and I told the Dragonborn not to move, though she wept as she watched him hit me with it; she neither used her Thu'um nor stood until after midnight, when I lay bleeding and grinning before her._

 _She was livid, but I assured her that these zealots would have gone to these lengths even if she had not disobeyed them._

 _The last was the Trial of Darkness. The Dragonborn was taken by Arngeir and Einarth to a cave lower on the mountain that he assured me was empty of creatures and men._

" _But you didn't tell_ her _that."_

 _Arngeir had bowed, and ordered Borri and Wulfgar in to perform the_ aavraak, _which translates loosely to "the joining" when speaking of dragons, when it has a sexual connotation; for men, however, the translation implies "the harnass," which suggests a binding for a practical use._

 _This practice has many positions; I will describe those that hurt the most, once they performed them on me:_

 _Borri lay facedown on the ground, and pushed himself up in the front while Wulfgar sat on his calves and pulled him back by the arms until I heard cracks all along his spine._

 _Borri and Wulfgar sat cross-legged in front of each other, and Borri leaned forward, pressing his face into Wulfgar's ankles while Wulfgar pushed him down by the shoulders, and then Borri did the same for Wulfgar; this one is humiliating._

 _Borri and Wulfgar then put their feet together and lengthened out their legs until their knees were locked, then bent forward to clasp hands; Borri leaned back, pulling Wulfgar as far forward as he could take, and then Wulfgar did the same for Borri. This one very nearly broke my bones._

 _I have known acute pain in my life, but nothing compares to the_ aavraak. _Yet I rested peacefully that night because of it, and endeavored to perform the_ aavraak _with the Dragonborn, once she returned._

 _The Trial of Darkness takes seven days for the average student of the Way of the Voice to complete; Einarth took six, and Ulfric Stormcloak took twelve. Yet the Dragonborn returned in two._

 _Every time I have thought her obstacle impossible, she has succeeded, greeting me upon her return with a tired smile and rosy cheeks beneath a mess of hair._

 _She began this journey with no record of where she truly comes from; she said as much to me before we reached Ivarstead._

" _If I am anonymous," she said, "then I can be anyone. Do anything."_

 _Yet I have seen her challenge those words. Her stoicism in the line of insult and abuse has given her a strength that someone with no scars can never fake. She has ceased viewing the heroes of old as_ deeds _stamped with a name and begun to see them as people who had to do_ something _. Her voice may be hoarse, her shoulders more bowed, and her smiles less frequent, but she has done as have the heroes of legend: she has forsaken being_ anyone _, and now fights to be_ someone _._

 _Respectfully,_

 _Vilkas of Jorrvaskr_

#

 _Brother,_

 _I had to wait to respond to your letter while my arm healed. I was_ not _going to dictate this to Harjid or to these damned monks. Skjor was right about them._

 _Harjid gave me good advice: she challenged me to_ conquer _my weaknesses rather than simply_ avoid _them. She says that advice came from the Greybeards, but I have my doubts._

 _These monks are not what I expected. Priests in the temples of the Divines are often too kindly; the Greybeards are not. The leader, Arngeir, told me in all seriousness that my death would have been easier for them in their training for Harjid; I couldn't decide whether to laugh or lunge at him. I know you would have done the latter._

 _It makes me wonder—would I have been thus disappointed if I'd been able to meet Ysgramor? Talos? Our true father? Skjor predicted this. And I had the lowest expectations of the bard, but even she is preferable to these fools. I asked Arngeir to send her in once her studies were finished for the day, and he held out his hands and smiled up at the tattered banners on the ceiling and said, "The wondrous teachings of the mountain never cease."_

 _I've caught myself on occasion speaking too freely to some of them; their silence invites you in, and that's dangerous. Please remember that the next time you write to me;_ some _information is too sensitive._

 _Remind Kodlak that I wrote his letter with posterity in mind; I know he gets a laugh out of the formality of it. Don't let Skjor read it. In fact, until this Silver Hand business is done, it's best you avoid him and Aela._

 _As for Ria, I am not surprised. You two get on well; I only worry that if both man and wife are kind, people will always take advantage of you. If you decide to pursue this to its obvious end, at least prepare yourself for people like Torvar, who will always ask you both for a place to stay. Or money._

 _Now, forgive me—I need some of your money. I owe forty drakes to the Jarl for a bounty on Harjid. Please pay it; I think you owe me twice that, anyway._

 _And Farkas? The answer is no._

 _Vilkas_

#

He began his morning the way he used to, finally: he awoke before dawn and went to the floor for a series of pushups; his arm protested some, and he was winded before he should have been, but his blood was pumping, his head clearing.

Weeks had passed since he'd seen a sunrise. His nights were spent noting the scrolls and books Harjid had swiped for him from the Greybeard's cabinets while she sat beside him, sleeping on her pages of runes; he would tap her awake, pretending to need help with a translation so that she would rise and go to bed afterward.

Vilkas lifted a rock he hoped was as heavy as the weights back home, then lay in the frozen grass, pressing it up from his chest until his muscles burned, but well before the Dragonborn began her morning chants inside, as he'd intended.

Her final trial from the Greybeards loomed before them both; he told Arngeir she wasn't ready to delve into some ancient ruin, especially with the shoddy training she'd had with their brittle swords and brittler swordsmen.

Arngeir disagreed, claiming that Vilkas would never deem her ready. "You are afraid if she ends her day with a callous."

"Give her a couple of weeks with me," Vilkas replied. "She'll be ready."

Whether they would allow him to accompany her, he preferred not to ask until after they returned. _And there's still the Silver Hand to consider. At this rate they will shatter my bones before I draw my sword._

He'd had word from Skjor concerning his and Aela's retaliation; another man, from a lifetime ago, would have found their actions just; but Vilkas knew Kodlak sought a cure in his books day and night; if he were there, with him, they could be cured before the Silver Hand even caught up to them again.

 _But Harjid will die if they send her out there alone._

She stepped out into the mid-morning sunlight wearing her leather greaves, but no jerkin; Vilkas rolled his eyes.

"Go inside and don't come back without a jerkin, missy."

"You're not wearing one," she called. "And how am I supposed to concentrate when I can see your chest through your shirt?"

He seethed. "You'll want to practice in armor."

"And as soon as you wear yours, I'll wear mine." She handed him his reed sword and tapped the rim of the firepit beside them, then lunged when she thought he was distracted by it.

He knocked her sword away and whacked her hip. She yelped, then swung at him, missing sorely.

"I shouldn't be too embarrassed. You're the best swordsman in Skyrim," she said, lunging again.

"In _Tamriel._ " He needed only one hand to dispatch her. "You're letting their training back into your swings. Show me what you've learned from me."

"You should be teaching _them_ , too." Harjid was already panting.

Vilkas shook his head. "They don't like me."

She laughed breathily, and he knocked her wooden blade from her grip.

"You're hesitating in trying to confuse me," he said, the tip of his sword at her throat, "but you're faster than me, or you could be."

"So should I just swing at you?" she asked, picking up her blade again.

He nodded. "Just like I taught you. You'll find your own rhythm. Once that happens, you'll be able to refine it so it doesn't show on your face. Let's go."

She did better, and he told her.

"Let's try this, now. Aim for kill spots. You keep targeting my other arm, but that's where a shield could be. I don't want you to get reliant on it."

She nodded, and after a few quick taps, her sword tip smacked his chest.

"You remembered the heart! Good, missy." He was grinning like a fool.

"You're really enjoying this, aren't you?"

He wiped his forehead on his sleeve. "Much more than _telling_ you how to point your blade, aye. A man isn't alive unless he has bruises."

"Well, you've amply repaid me already."

"I forgot I owed you."

She got him again, too quickly. "You're letting me win. You have to be."

"I could go harder on you," he said. "But I've also been down a long time."

"A lesser man would still be abed, Shield-Brother."

He panted through a grin, taking stance again. "It's your lousy bedside manner, Dragonborn."

She laughed, and he supposed, on occasion, it wasn't too bad a sound.

#

Their voices echoed when they entered the monastery, and as he closed the door, she told him again how she could kill him with a whisper, and he held her chin and told her to prove it, expecting her to knock his hand away.

But her smile faltered, and her eyes darted to his lips, and he swallowed, and Einarth, sandals slapping the stones before them, extended a letter out to Vilkas.

He loosened his thumb from her chin, which she tucked meekly into her shoulder with a smile before retreating to his room for the _aavraak_.

Vilkas never knew how long he stared at the letter, only that she came out again and gasped when she looked over his shoulder at the only line on the page:

 _Skjor is dead._

"Vilkas." Her voice retreated from him, and he found he'd walked to his bedside and began throwing things into his bag. He had to get back, they needed to retaliate, Kodlak would want his advice, Aela his shoulder, Farkas his strength . . . the whelps his direction.

"You have to stay here," he said. He only realized he interrupted her when she stopped talking. _Was that what that noise was?_ "I can't protect you _and_ them. Stay here, practice your swings, and when I return, we'll go to Ustengrav."

"You didn't listen to a word I said, did you?"

Vilkas fastened his pack. "No."

Harjid grabbed his arm, and he pulled her off, but she kept talking anyway: "Did the Trial of Stillness teach you nothing? You know retaliation will just end in more death!"

He rounded on her, the Greybeards gathering in the doorway. "Why would that matter? You don't know a thrice-damned thing about death, woman. Skjor is one of _us_."

"We don't even know how he died."

"Yes I damn well do!" he roared.

She shrank, looking up at him through tears under a furrowed brow.

"This isn't your fight," he said finally. "Wait here. Stay safe, so I can come back for you." He slung his bag over his shoulder.

"You're letting the werewolf inside take control of you."

Vilkas' stomach turned to ice.

"Your eyes were yellow. It's what I saw the night of our climb." She watched him levelly, though her voice was thick. "It doesn't matter if they know," she said of the monks. "Who would they tell?"

" _It isn't yours to tell!"_

"Then silence me."

Vilkas hadn't realized he'd lifted his hand, but his fingernails dug into the flesh of his palm, the hairs on the back of his hand bristling to meet Harjid's pale cheek. The monks surrounded them, and Arngeir tried to say something in a calming way, which only infuriated him.

"If you beat them like this," Harjid interrupted, "you're only letting the Silver Hand win. Think about your reputation. Be who you were before the beast blood."

"Before . . ." _I was the boy who thrust a knife into his mother's heart._ He lowered his hand. "I'm leaving."

#

The innkeeper at Vilemyr was none too pleased to see them again, and had Vilkas any strength to smile, he would have; Harjid would have laughed herself hoarse.

The descent was a quicker journey than the climb had been, but it was all the more tiring, for he kept trying to lose her, and she kept up better than he anticipated, following him with a string of curses. Vilkas remembered the bitter silence that had hung between Harjid and him for the climb to Hrothgar with something akin to wistfulness.

He held up two fingers to Wilhelm as he and Harjid settled at a table; she nestled her chin over her folded arms, and Vilkas saw her eyes looked itchy. She hadn't known Skjor, but he imagined she wept for the stress of his rejecting her offer to come along, and the subsequent battles she fought him on the matter. He knew he ought to explain, but . . . she surely felt the same about death that she always had. And since this was the first loss he'd had since he was a boy, well . . . he couldn't bear convincing her Skjor had died a worthy death when he was still trying to convince himself.

Wilhelm set two bottles of mead before them, and Harjid, thank the gods, asked for a plate of mammoth steak for him.

"Will ye be staying again?" asked the innkeep, folding his fingers together in an attempt to be nonchalant.

"Two rooms, please," she said with a nod.

Wilhelm bowed his head, and Vilkas wondered if he was afraid he'd trigger another screaming match between Harjid and him. It almost made him smile. Then the bard woman began strumming her lute.

A table of three men cheered her talent, though even Vilkas could admit that Harjid was a better player; he wondered if he should tell her, and if her singing voice would sound the same now, after all her training. But she was watching Lynly Star-Song, her breath quickening.

"You shouldn't have come."

Harjid furrowed her brow and lifted her head again. " _I'll do as I please!_ "

The men at the next table eyed them for a moment, and Vilkas had to begin clapping to turn their attention back to the bard—the other one, anyway.

Harjid swallowed hard and looked away from him.

Wilhelm set a plate before him and a bowl of stew before her; Vilkas couldn't help his hum of approval at the smell. No one seasoned a mammoth snout better than Tilma, but after two months of vegetable stew and apple cider, even the tough steak seasoned with naught but salt and troll fat made his mouth water.

She'd told Arngeir she would train with Vilkas on the journey to Whiterun, then to Ustengrav; the old man hadn't believed her, not fully, but they were eager for her final trial to begin, and so she was dismissed with blessings and instructions. They were more than happy to see Vilkas go.

The men were already drunk and ordering more; Vilkas watched as Harjid tried to keep her eye on one as he stood to dance with Temba Wide-Arm, who pushed him away at first, then succumbed just so she could be done with it.

"Hey."

Harjid's jaw clenched as she flicked her eyes back to him.

"Remember what you said up the mountain. It isn't your fight, missy. Conquer it."

She ran her thumb along the length of her spoon handle, unblinking as she watched the soldier spin Temba.

"Look away," Vilkas hissed at her. An Imperial may not consider a woman worth a fight, but these were traditional Nords, their blue armor not too faded to tell they served Ulfric's cause; and angering the Stormcloaks was the last thing they needed two days from Whiterun Hold.

Once the song was finished, Temba found a seat, which left the Stormcloak somewhat agitated; Vilkas sucked in a breath, for the soldier had turned to approach Lynly, who was walking up to his and Harjid's table.

The heat and the mead were getting to him; his brain was sluggish, his eyes heavy, and when Lynly rested a wrist on his shoulder and the other hand on her hip, he froze like a rabbit in the den of a fox.

Harjid rolled her eyes and went to her room, but one of the Stormcloaks hooted after her, claiming she'd enjoy his attentions to her backside.

Vilkas gritted his teeth, but Harjid had paid the soldier no mind and even caught herself from slamming her door. He turned his face up at Lynly, who was quickly becoming the only woman in the room, and he forced a smile and bid her goodnight before she could begin a conversation. He closed his door with as much gentleness as he could muster, pressed his ear to the wall he shared with Harjid's room, but hearing nothing, stripped off his armor and fell into bed.

As his eyelids sank, he hoped Harjid wasn't mulling over the bard or the soldiers, keeping herself needlessly awake.

#

Vilkas awoke twice before midnight because of the drunkards in the hall; first when they'd protested the music's end, and again when they argued with Wilhelm about pricing for a room. By the time one of them crept into his room to rob him or worse, Vilkas was heavily asleep, dreaming that Harjid tiptoed to his bed; then she opened her mouth and released her Thu'um, and Vilkas jumped awake and shoved the Stormcloak against the wall by the throat.

The soldier battered Vilkas' face, but each hit grew weaker than the last, his eyes losing focus before he fell from Vilkas' grip.

 _If I have only one, Harjid has two._ Vilkas bent to get his sword off his bedpost, stumbling as he did, his head frantically thrumming and his eye swelling shut.

Harjid's door was open, and she cowered in the corner of her bed, holding her own hand over her mouth as one soldier knelt over the remains of the other, muttering "That bitch. You bitch, what did you do?"

Vilkas made to swing his sword, but Harjid's whimpering made him falter and merely hold the blade to the soldier's neck. The soldier had to be told a few times to disarm, and he never looked away from the bloody mess of what remained of his comrade.

Wilhelm burst in, shakily holding a club that looked older than he was. "What happ—?"

Vilkas told him to grab the man from his room. "Bring him to me so she can go in there, then shut her inside and get the guards."

"You have a weapon," Wilhelm said with his eyes wild. "Can't you just—"

"Get him now or I turn my blade on you!"

Wilhelm scurried out, and through the door, Vilkas could see everyone had awakened. "Heh. Looks like we brought the party again, missy."

She looked miserable; her eyes were twitching, knees up to her chest. She opened her mouth to speak, then covered it and began to sob.

"She's a fucking monster."

Vilkas jerked the man by his hair. "You will remain silent or I'll show you a monster."

Wilhelm returned, reporting that the soldier was unconscious, but that he'd at least pulled him out of Vilkas' room.

"Good. Missy, go inside. Lie down, and don't open the door for anyone but me."

She tried to speak, but covered her mouth.

"I can't understand you. Just follow orders."

Harjid looked down at her legs and shook her head.

"Here," he grunted, shoving his sword at Wilhelm, "take this."

"Wouldn't it be wiser if I carried the girl? I'm only an innkeeper."

Vilkas rolled his eyes, dragging the soldier out into the hall and throwing him next to the unconscious one. "Do you want her to Shout you apart too? Just swing this if they move. Either of them."

He returned to Harjid, who shook her head when he held his arms out for her.

"You won't hurt me, missy. Remember your meditations. Come here."

She began whispering beneath her hand and crawled to the edge of the bed. When she faced the mess of the last soldier, her breaths came shallow, keening.

Vilkas scooped her up beneath the knees and shoulders. "Shh. I have you. Don't look at it."

"But I killed him."

"He tried to kill you." _Two soldiers for her and one for me. They knew who she was._

Harjid pressed her face into his chest as he carried her to his bed. She scooted back against the wall, and he whispered that he'd be back in a moment.

With the door closed behind him, Vilkas took his sword back from Wilhelm, who left to get the guards. He leveled his blade at the conscious soldier's throat. "Talk," he growled.

But the soldier played dumb, swearing on his life, on his mother's life, and on the heart of Ysmir that there was nothing to say.

"He'll wag his tongue once he wakes up," Vilkas said of the other soldier, "so yours may be one more than we need."

"Alright, I got it. We're just soldiers, see."

Vilkas tightened his hold on the hilt.

"Well, of course you see. So we got caught poaching on the wrong lands about a month ago. Got sent to the Reach to report for guard duty in some piss-water village."

"But you didn't go."

"Fuck no we didn't," the soldier said. "We're worth more to the cause than that. Got as far as Ivarstead, heard tell of the Dragonborn up at the mountain, and decided we'd wait to sell her to Ulfric."

"What would he want with her?"

"Don't matter to me. I just can't show my face in Windhelm unless it's with a prize."

 _Could be true. But when has Ulfric ever passed up an opportunity?_ Vilkas smashed the Stormcloak's fingers with the dull side of his blade.

He swore up at Vilkas, finishing with, "What was _that_ for?"

"For attacking a woman with the heart of a dragon. Did you expect that to be easy?"

The guards finally arrived with Wilhelm, and Vilkas left them to it once he'd reported their crimes; he worried that the innkeeper would have left something out, and he had no doubt the soldiers could have intimidated him into accusing them of something petty instead.

He hoped to find Harjid asleep, but she was on the floor, searching his bag. Vilkas undid his sword belt, an eyebrow raised. "Are you so eager to return to a life of crime?"

She sat back on her heels, exhaling shakily. "I just want to sleep."

"Oh." _She pointed her mouth away from me._ "Well, I didn't bring that eldershade. Or it was lost on the mountain during our climb."

Her face fell into her palms, her back shuddering with her sobs.

 _She isn't crying about sleeping draft._ "Missy?" he said. " _Harjid_. Come on." He knelt beside her, directing her arms around his neck and hooking a forearm under her legs.

Once she was nestled back in the bed, Vilkas went to his pack for his bedroll; she eyed him the whole time.

"Is everything alright? Do you need me next to you?"

"No."

It was the weakest he'd ever heard her; she sounded half a child. He supposed, when he really considered it, she very well was.

The candle was sputtering out as he went to retrieve her things. In the silence, Harjid grimaced into another fit of tears.

 _Surest way to make her furious is to tell her to calm down._ "Are you hurt?" he asked stupidly.

She drew a shuddering breath, then pressed her face into her knees, her body curling with every sob.

Vilkas pulled at her arm, and she drew away, but he tried again.

"I'm _not_!" she screamed at him. Then, horrified, she cupped her mouth and squeezed more tears down her cheeks.

"You shouldn't be ashamed."

She looked up at him, clearly stricken. "You saw—" Harjid had to fight to keep her voice even, but Vilkas interrupted her.

"Aye, I saw! He got what he deserved, milkdrinker that he was."

She swallowed, her expression hardening. "I just thought . . . I've been training for so long, now. Why do I become a mess every time? Still?"

"Farkas and I . . . our lives have always been loud, with cutpurses in the day and cutthroats at night," he said. "We've had twenty years to toughen our hearts among the Companions." He kicked his bedroll open, letting it unfurl until it hit the wall. "Probably doesn't help you're half-Imperial."

That gentle little laugh rang out, if only through tears. She lay her head on the pillow, and he left her to it while he readied his bed.

 _Twenty years. A child left, and the gods demand a man return._ Vilkas almost laughed. _From the boy who shoved a blade in his mother's heart to the werewolf who takes coin for kills. Twenty years isn't so long._

Sleep came to Harjid before him. He heard her breathing even out, smelled her heartbeat steady itself, and saw the hand that had picked at the bed sheet fall limp.

His hackles rose the moment her Thu'um had awoken him. _Or sooner,_ he thought, remembering the dream about her. _I'm being kept awake by the spirit of a wolf, yet she sleeps soundly with the soul of a dragon inside her._

Vilkas recited her chants in his head, his mouth stretching into a sleepy smile when he realized he hadn't lost his temper that night. At least, not like he would have, before.

 _Twenty years isn't long at all, but two months was a lifetime. Maybe those Greybeards are wiser than I thought._

* * *

Thank you again for all your kind words! I own nothing but Harjid's name. Probably not even that.

I said this would be from Vilkas' POV in Sovngarde last time, but I half-lied because suspense.

There are excerpts from the series _Songs of the Return_ , which I do not own. Even though I slightly reworded spots for flow. Don't you just love Elder Scrolls books though? It's like the only thing I steal.

The next chapter will be Harjid's POV in Windhelm. And that's no lie. Prepare yourselves for more tragic-past angst and uncertain touching because what even is romance

Have a Happy Valentine's Day. :3


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